
Class JS^i^SL 

Bonk ■ L i_M t fy 

Copyright^ . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



KNOWLEDGE, LIFE AND REALITY 



KNOWLEDGE, 
LIFE AND REALITY 

AN ESSAY IN 
SYSTEMATIC PHILOSOPHY 



BY 

George Trumbull Ladd, LL.D. 

AUTHOR OF "PHILOSOPHY OF MIND," "PHILOSOPHY 

OF CONDUCT," "A THEORY OF REALITY," 

"PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION," ETC. 




NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1909 






Copyright, 1909 
DODD, MEAD & CO. 

Published, October, 1909 



, 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Philosophy: Its Conception and its Prob- 
lems 1 

II Philosophy : Its Method and its Divisions . 21 

III Schools of Philosophy 33 

IV Philosophy op Knowledge: The Psycholog- 

ical View 57 

V Kinds, Degrees, and Limits of Knowledge . 78 
VI Principles and Presuppositions of Knowl- 
edge 101 

VII Scepticism, Agnosticism, and Criticism . . 125 

VIII Metaphysics, as a Theory of Pieality . . . 154 
IX Nature and Significance of the So-called 

" Categories " 171 

X Philosophy of Nature 195 

XI Philosophy of Mind 225 

XII Matter and Mind : Nature and Spirit . . . 252 
XIII Ethics, or Moral Philosophy: Its Sphere 

and Problems 268 

XIV The Moral Self 278 

XV The Morally Good: Its Kinds (the Virtues) 

and its Unity 314 

XVI Schools of Ethics 336 

XVII ^ESTHETICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 365 



'CONTENTS 

CHAPTED! PAGE 

XVIII, The Arts : Their Classification and Nature 384 

XIX The Spirit of Beauty 409 

XX, Philosophy of Keligion : Its Origin in Expe- 
rience . ;.. 430 

XXI The World-Ground as Absolute Person . . 456 

XXII God as Ethical Spirit . ... . . . ,., .. 478 

XXIII. God and the World . ; . 504 

XXIV Summary and Conclusion . . . r .- w r« 526 



PREFACE 

The service which it is hoped that this book may in some 
measure accomplish, can best be explained by a reference to 
the life-work and life-purpose of its author. For more than 
a generation it has been his daily duty to observe, read, teach, 
and reflect, within the field covered by problems which are 
somewhat vaguely grouped together under the word, " philos- 
ophy." During this period the conviction has been growing 
that Plato, when he remarked a likeness between the fitting 
attitude of the soul toward these problems, and the most ten- 
der, absorbing, and important, of human personal relations, 
spoke to the world of men something more valuable than a 
taking, but extravagant hyperbole. I am well aware that this 
is not the popular estimate of philosophy at the present time; 
and the fact that it is not, is by no means wholly due to an 
adverse spirit in the age. It is almost equally due to the way 
in which its interests have been "exploited" (I use the word 
intelligently and deliberately) by many to whom the care of 
philosophic culture has been especially entrusted. 

Formerly, the teachers and writers in the field of philosophy, 
— especially of ethics and the philosophy of religion, but also 
of general metaphysics, and even of the allied subjects of psy- 
chology and logic, — were chiefly, and indeed almost exclusively, 
the presidents of our colleges and others who had received an 
education in theology. Many, and perhaps the majority, of 
their pupils and readers, were either intending to enter the 
ministry, or were already enjoying the opportunities, and 
bound by the duties, of the ministerial office. What they had 
to gain from the class-room, or from the reading of books on 
philosophy, was expected to be useful, in an important and im- 



PREFACE 

mediate way, as preparation for their professional life. The 
others, and indeed all, who were having what was then called 
a "liberal education," were required to study the same sub- 
jects ; and thus to get at least some dim and inchoate conception 
of the nature of philosophy, and some appreciation, either fav- 
orable or unfavorable, of its application to the ideals and the 
conduct of a truly successful life. Now, however, for a consid- 
erable time, it has been quite the fashion to complain of the 
work done in this way, as dull and depressing; and to dis- 
credit the results, as tending to discourage, rather than elicit 
and encourage, a taste for prolonged reading and serious study 
of the issues and the problems of reflective thinking. And 
doubtless, there is much truth of fact to warrant this lowered 
estimate of a now old-fashioned regard for, and use of, the 
discipline of philosophy as an essential for making a noble 
manhood, and for imparting a truly liberal and fine culture. 
But I am inclined to think that there is also much misunder- 
standing and even misrepresentation as to the real facts. I 
believe that the maturer impressions are more favorable as to 
the results actually achieved by these now abandoned methods. 
But, however this may be, about one thing there can be no 
doubt. The intention of the age was to make reflection a duty, 
and its results an important factor in the better and nobler life. 
And in very truth, the study of philosophy, however con- 
ducted or however far carried, cannot be safely undertaken 
with either intellectual or moral indifference. Indeed, I am 
willing to adopt Plato's figure of speech and to put its state- 
ment into more modern, but not more genuinely devout terms. 
Problems having to do with the validity of human Knowledge, 
the ideals of human Life, and the ultimate nature of Eeality, 
are " not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly ; but 
reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of 
God." In the case of these problems, most emphatically, 
truths arrived at by speculation on a basis of experienced facts, 
cannot be separated from truths that demand from us the guid- 



PREFACE 

ance of our practice and the control of life. Such truths are, 
indeed, something more than " pragmatic," in the present, cur- 
rent conception of this uncertain and much-abused word. On 
the one hand, they require the profoundest use of reason for 
their discovery, defence, and elaboration; on the other hand, 
they exercise the profoundest influence upon the satisfactions, 
the character, and the destiny, of the soul. The age, therefore, 
which neglects philosophy is sure to be sensuous and vulgar. 
The age which treats philosophy flippantly is sure to be shallow 
and, at the end, dissatisfied with its achievements. The age 
that takes its philosophy seriously, and even passionately, gains 
thereby an enormous accession of motive power for either evil 
or good results. It is a matter, then, which the author has 
upon his heart and conscience, to make this book of some help 
to its readers by way of appreciating and illumining those ques- 
tions which every rational being ought to ask himself; and 
which are here brought together under the title : " Knowledge, 
Life, and Keality." 

That our common purpose may be attained the better, I have 
two requests to make of my readers. The first of these is that 
they will not assign me to any so-called " school," or to any 
master as his pupil, — at least, not prematurely. I have 
learned, indeed, from many sources; and not in smallest meas- 
ure from my own pupils; who, being themselves educated 
under varying intellectual and social influences, Occidental and 
Oriental, have discussed with me and with one another, all the 
major, and most of the minor problems of philosophy. In do- 
ing this we have, of course, made use of the writings of the 
great masters both in ancient and in modern times. But, so 
far as I am aware, I have never allowed myself to do, what I 
have earnestly striven to prevent them from doing, — namely, 
form an uncritical and fixed attachment for any system of re- 
flective thinking, taken as a whole. The motto of the class- 
room and of the private study has ever been: NuIUus jurare 
in verba magistri. Besides this, my own development of any at- 



PREFACE 

tempt at systematic results, which has been rather abnormally 
slow, has been preceded by prolonged study of the separate 
problems, the solutions of which need to be combined in the 
total result. However all this may be, my request is simply 
this : " Let us both, reader and author, abjure all deference 
to the i idols of the theater,' as well as to the c idols of the cave/ 
and try to frame and judge our philosophical opinions according 
to the harmony of the truths that are expressed in them." 

One other request seems to me equally reasonable. It is that 
a fair amount of candid reflection shall determine the mean- 
ing, and the truth of the meaning, which has been put into the 
words. There is no inherent reason why philosophical opinions 
should not be made intelligible to any intelligent and thought- 
ful, not to say educated, reader. But this desirable end can- 
not be reached without a genuine effort at co-operation. Pro- 
found philosophy may be taught in poetry, drama, and even in 
the novel. But if it is to be got out of these captivating forms 
of its presentation, the author cannot do all the work. In this 
book I have, for the most part, carefully avoided all technical 
language; and I have taken pains to make my meaning clear. 
But the very subject — since philosophy is the product of re- 
flective thinking — requires the studious and reflecting mind on 
the part of those who make use of the book. If in any places 
it shall seem more difficult to understand — not to say, essen- 
tially obscure, — than the nature of the discussion itself makes 
reasonable, I shall stand ready to confess my failure and to 
bear the blame. But I cannot promise or hope to be under- 
stood by those who care only to be, for the moment, entertained ; 
or who have neither the inclination nor the leisure to give to 
my efforts any measure of careful and thoughtful attention. 

To those who are already at all familiar with the other writ- 
ings on philosophy by the same author, as well as to those who 
may possibly be attracted to some of those writings by reading 
this book, a further word of introduction may prove helpful. 
During the last twenty-five years, I have treated of the leading 



PREFACE 

questions, the more prominent aspects of philosophy, in a series 
of monographs. Several of these have been designedly techni- 
cal and elaborate treatises of particular departments of gen- 
eral philosophy. But in this one volume I am putting into 
semi-popular form the system of reflective thinking which has 
been evolved and published previously in separate volumes. The 
reader who desires a more detailed exposition and defense of 
this system should study it in these monographs. To them, 
however, not infrequent reference is made in the present vol- 
ume. 

GEOKGE TEUMBULL LADD. 
New Haven, August, 1909. 



"From the unreal lead me to the real. 
From darkness lead me to light. 
From death lead me to immortality.'* 

Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad, 1, 3, 27 c 

" Intellect relies on Reason, Faith on Author- 
iUj ; opinion defends itself by probability alone. 
These two comprehend the sure truth; but faith, 
in closed and involuted, intelligence, in exposed 
and manifest, form." 

Bernard. 



CHAPTER I 

PHILOSOPHY: ITS CONCEPTION AND ITS PROBLEMS! 

In its more general and vague, but most adequate and human 
meaning, the word " Philosophy " may be made to include all 
the products of man's reflective thinking. And since man, as 
we know him in history, has always been given to reflection, 
fragments of thought which bear the characteristic marks of 
the philosophical interpretation of experience, exist from the 
beginning. Indeed, if we discard all uncertain conjectures with 
regard to that mythical being, the so-called " primitive man," 
and the yet more uncertain conjectures as to some order of 
beings half-human, half-animal, we must agree with Aristotle: 
" All men by nature reach after knowledge." But this sentence 
occurs at the beginning of his work on Metaphysics, or First 
Philosophy; and the kind of knowledge to which he refers is 
the distinguishing pursuit of the philosopher. To philosophize, 
then, is to be human. For in the words of Mr. Shadworth 
Hodgson : " The need to philosophize is rooted in our nature 
as deeply as any other of our needs." 

As a matter of course, however, men began at first to reflect 
upon those facts of external nature, and those inner experi- 
ences, which seemed of most immediate and pressing interest. 
As a matter of course, too, both the method used and the results 
of their reflection, were vague, confused, and indecisive. But 
in saying this, we must be careful not to do discredit to the 
intellectual acumen and intellectual interests of the most unde- 
veloped races or barbarous and uncivilized peoples. Modern 
research seems rather to be widening than closing up the gap 
between the least civilized known races of men and the most 
intelligent of the lower animals. And at the same time, it is 



2 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

increasingly emphasizing the essential spiritual unity of the 
human race. Their language, customs, folk-lore, and attempts 
at scientific explanation and philosophical interpretation, show 
these so-called primitive peoples to be lacking, not so much 
in intellectual quality or ethical sensitiveness, as in the enjoy- 
ment of the accumulated resources of a long line of ancestral 
efforts, under the more favorable physical and social circum- 
stances — which we at present enjoy. Nor are they altogether 
deficient in power to make some of the most essential philosoph- 
ical distinctions. The untutored man, the member of a some- 
what isolated savage tribe, has little inducement, and less oppor- 
tunity, for cultivating any of the particular sciences after the 
modern method of experiment and induction. He attributes 
the direction and flight of his arrow to the strength of his bow 
and the pull of his arm; the grateful sensations of warmth to 
the sun or to the fire; the birth of children to the act of pro- 
creation; the drift of his canoe to the currents of water and 
wind. But to him the wind, the sun, the fire, are themselves 
mysteries too deep and high for solution by any formula that 
summarizes facts of invariable or customary sequence; there- 
fore he naively and instinctively resorts at once to the meta- 
physical interpretation of his experience; he makes gods out of 
these natural objects, who must be propitiated or obeyed. How, 
indeed, should he arrive at a scientific explanation of 
phenomena which are increasingly difficult and baffling even 
for modern physics to explain? Why, also, should he not, 
failing of modern science, recognize at once what this science 
itself is compelled to recognize — namely, that, back of all 
its formulas, there is a Being of the World, which the human 
mind is compelled to interpret as like itself, and yet superior to 
itself ? And as to the phenomena of birth, and life, and death, 
this need of the philosophical interpretation, as something 
additional and yet working, as it were, in and through the 
scientific explanation, is surely no less great for the savage 
than it is for the most learned of modern biologists. 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS CONCEPTION AND PROBLEMS 3 

It is not strange, therefore, that even among the most gifted 
and progressive peoples, philosophy did not earlier separate 
itself from other cognate forms of human endeavor, as a sort 
of independent discipline. It was, at first, the rather, all inter- 
mixed with literature, in the form of myth, legend and poetry; 
with crude attempts at history, and with the uncertain begin- 
nings of the particular sciences ; but above all with theology and 
religion. Indeed, a large proportion of the philosophizing 
done at the present time, and that by no means the least im- 
portant, does not recognize in any practical way the necessity 
for making this separation. In India, which has been charac- 
terized for centuries by a kind of speculative genius, philosophy 
is chiefly an attempt at a deductive theology, which may be made 
a matter of science resting upon personal experience for the 
more profound thinkers, but which is given to the people in the 
form of religious myth. In China, philosophy is either a science 
of politics, as related to heavenly powers and to the spirits of 
deceased ancestors; or else it is a conglomerate of geomancy 
or other forms of divination, based upon a crude and antiquated 
conception of nature. In Japan, apart from the importations 
of Western speculative thought, philosophy consists either of 
hair-splitting distinctions in the pantheistic systems of the 
various sects of Buddhism, or in the distinctive development 
given in that land to the Confucian ethics by the demands of 
its feudal system. While all over the Muhammadan world, 
philosophy is a rigid and uncompromising doctrine of either 
practical or mystical monotheism. But these countries com- 
prise, not only the majority of the civilized races, but also 
some of the most interesting and choice developments of re- 
flective thinking. 

'It is customary to say that the Greeks were the first to culti- 
vate philosophy as an independent discipline. Hence we flatter 
ourselves by deriving our descent from these gifted ancients, 
along the lines of reflective thinking and its product in the 
form of systematic philosophy. This is largely, and yet only 



4 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

partially, true. But as Zeller has shown, even the indefinite- 
ness of the term " philosophy " among the classical Greeks, 
and yet more among their degenerate successors, proves that 
the thing itself had scarcely as yet appeared as a " specific form 
of intellectual life." When the earliest Greek writers sepa- 
rated so-called philosophy from its traditional form of religious 
myth and poetry, they made of it a sort of crude metaphysics 
of physics. The term "natural philosophy," which persisted 
down to the more recent times, has, therefore, a legitimate 
birthright. There was no attempt among the Greeks, however, 
to distinguish between science and philosophy. Indeed, in the 
modern meaning of the words, there was as little science as 
philosophy. And the moment — as was inevitable — that the in- 
sufficiency of any material principle like water, air, fire, or the 
" unlimited " of Anaximander, " The infinite mass of matter 
out of which all things arise," became apparent, something 
spiritual in the way of a Divine Being, or Mind, was assumed as 
necessary to interpret the sum-total of phenomena. That is to 
say, the need of something super-sensible, if not strictly super- 
natural, in order to complete the explanation, was fully recog- 
nized. Even Plato and Aristotle did not hold a conception of 
metaphysics favorable to its claim to a domain distinct from the 
particular sciences. The former did, indeed, recognize a system, 
or kingdom, of " ideas," which under the supremacy of the 
Idea of the Good was to furnish an explanation of all that men 
esteem actual in occurrences, or real in existence, as tested by 
their daily experiences. But this doctrine supersedes by abol- 
ishing all that the modern man considers essential to the con- 
ceptions and working methods of the particular sciences. Plato's 
definition of philosophy makes it a . certain attitude of mind 
rather than any systematized collection of the fruits of reflective 
thinking as guided by the principles and discoveries of the 
particular sciences. With Aristotle, however, philosophy, or as 
he sometimes called the same thing "wisdom" (aoyla), was 
identified with science in general. It, therefore, included the 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS CONCEPTION AND PROBLEMS 5 

theoretical sciences of mathematics, physics, and theology, and 
also the practical sciences of ethics and politics. But this 
greatest' of ancient thinkers also recognized a "First Philoso- 
phy" — a pre-eminently philosophical discipline which comprised 
the systematic and critical knowledge of the most general and 
fundamental principles of Being. In modern times we should 
call this " metaphysics " in the narrower meaning of the word ; 
or "ontology." 

After Aristotle, and until comparatively recent times, little 
or no advance was made in limiting or clearing up the con- 
ception of philosophy. During the mediaeval period in Europe 
it was almost completely identified with the defence or attack 
of churchly dogma, or the prevalent and authorized systematic 
theology. Descartes, who is popularly called the " father of 
modern philosophy," in his three principal works included the 
discussion of topics which would now be divided amongst 
treatises on logic, theory of knowledge, metaphysics, theology, 
and physics. Spinoza and Leibnitz did not distinguish be- 
tween philosophy on the one hand, and theology and the particu- 
lar sciences on the other hand. Locke, and his successors in 
England and France, did not separate the metaphysics of mind 
from psychology and a theory of scientific method. Indeed, in 
England almost down to the present time the use of the word 
has been so loose as to justify the sarcasm of Hegel, called forth 
by an advertisement promising to teach, for seven shillings, 
"The Art of Preserving the Hair on Philosophical Principles." 

It was Immanuel Kant who undertook the more precise lim- 
itation of the province of philosophy. This he thought to 
accomplish satisfactorily by his customary method of hard- and 
fixed-line divisions. All knowledge, he held, is either historical 
or rational; the former sets out from empirical data, the latter 
from principles. Again, of this rational knowledge, one kind 
is based on concepts; the other is based on the construction of 
concepts. The former alone is philosophical, the latter is 
mathematical. Thus does Kant with two strokes mark out the 



6 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

domain of philosophy, as distinguished from the empirical 
sciences on the one hand, and on the other from pure mathe- 
matics. He then proceeds to divide philosophy, as related to 
the ends of reason, into moral philosophy and cosmical 
philosophy; as to its objects, into the philosophy of nature and 
the philosophy of morals; and as to its methods, into pure and 
empirical. 

Careful reflection, and even a superficial acquaintance with 
history since Kant, convinces us that his distinctions cannot be 
justified in their original rigidity; nor can the divisions which 
grew out of them be comprehensively maintained. The develop- 
ment of human reason, too, has its history; and the empirical 
sciences have no history except as they are germinated and illu- 
minated by the same human reason. No form of knowledge, 
least of all either cosmical or moral philosophy, can be " based 
on concepts" that are not themselves' empirically derived, or 
based on experience. 

If we were to follow in detail the various attempts which 
have been made since Kant by the more or less distinguished 
writers on philosophical topics, to define strictly their concep- 
tion of their pursuit as at least a relatively independent and 
separate discipline, the result would be only to add to our dis- 
appointment. The inquiry, " What is philosophy ? " cannot be 
answered by a direct appeal to history. Neither can we find any 
great authority in either science or philosophy who has suc- 
ceeded, either theoretically or in his own practice, in completely 
and clearly dividing off the domains rightly allotted to these two 
forms of intellectual endeavor. All the sciences are still, either 
naively or intelligently, metaphysical; — that is, they are actu- 
ally interested and concerned in the development of the oldest 
and most persistent branch of philosophical discipline; and no 
branch or school of philosophy can even begin its investigation 
and display of material, without a concealed or frank, but 
always absolute, dependence upon the positive sciences. 

When, then, we hear Hegel and Trendelenburg defining phi- 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS CONXEPTIOX AXD PROBLEMS 7 

losophy as the " science of the Idea " ; while another writer 
declares that it is " the rational science of reality *' ; and yet 
another identifies it with the " metaphysics of the uncon- 
scious," or with a "theory of universal knowledge," or with 
" self-knowledge," or with the " systematic arrangement of 
the necessary a priori elements or factors in experience," or 
dubs it " the return of Metaphysic upon psychology " ; — we need 
not be dismayed or wholly discouraged by the failure to unite 
all authorities in the use of common terms to define their 
conception of divine philosophy. The authorities in science do 
not unite upon a definition of any one of the so-called " positive 
sciences" — not even of mathematics, the most positive of them 
all. Xeither has any of them a favorite theory which com- 
mands a quite universal consent. While it is notorious that if 
one wants an infallible expert opinion regarding some compli- 
cated, concrete case to which these principles may be applied, 
inquiry for it is apt to result in the increase of one's confusion 
of judgment. 

It would be a gross violation of the spirit and method of 
philosophy, however, to conclude that nothing is to be learned 
from history about its conception and its problems. On the 
contrary, the vague but historically true declaration that phi- 
losophy is a term which may be used to cover all the fruits of 
man's reflective thinking, and that it is human to philosophize, 
may now be converted into certain statements more strictly 
defined and technically correct. History teaches us — that of 
the particular sciences as well as the history of philosophy — 
that the human mind has never been, much less is it now, satis- 
fied with those explanations of experience which terminate in 
the relating, causally, and concatenating of phenomena, under 
terms that lay claim to more or less of mathematical exactness. 
The intellect seeks for some more ulterior and fundamental, for 
some more nearly ultimate and final, explanations of human 
experience. The heart craves, and the conduct of life demands, 
such interpretations of the Being of the physical Universe, of 



8 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

the natural objects and laws that are progressively revealed to 
human observation, and of the significance and destiny of 
human life, with its relation to unseen forces and agencies, as 
shall be in accord with humanity's most important and per- 
sistent ideals. All the positive sciences are obliged to recognize 
these sesthetical and quasi-moral, as well as more purely intel- 
lectual demands. Hence they are all, both in their foundations 
and in their upper reaches of theory and speculation, essentially 
philosophical. Physics and chemistry have their theory of 
reality as truly as does religion. The doctrine of the ether, or 
of the atoms, or of the ions, as the builders of the world of 
inorganic and organized existences as it appears in experience, 
is as much a system of metaphysics as was Plato's kingdom of 
Ideas, or Hegel's self-evolution of necessary and rational con- 
cepts. The assumptions of the physical and natural sciences, 
their categories and principles taken for granted, require and 
merit criticism, and even sceptical inquiry, as acutely and 
persistently as did those of the mediaeval theology. It would 
be a desirable and beneficent thing for human knowledge, if the 
experts in these sciences would themselves undertake this task 
of critical philosophy; just as it would have been desirable for 
the theologians of the Middle Ages to have looked more scep- 
tically upon their own presuppositions and contested principles. 
But neither science nor theology, nor any form of the so-called 
"humanities," can properly claim to lie outside the domain 
which is to be kept open always to the critical explorations of 
that form of reflective thinking which is called philoso- 
phizing. 

But now the question recurs: Can we define philosophy as 
an independent and separate science or discipline? Certainly 
not, in any strict meaning of the words " independent " and 
" separate." The attempt to do this, and thus exalt philosophy 
as the so-called " science of the sciences " to the position of 
judge and arbiter, or even of sovereign, over the particular forms 
of intellectual life which arrogate to themselves the title to be 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS CONCEPTION AND PROBLEMS 9 

•ailed scientific, has been one of the chief causes of the modern 
contempt and rejection of philosophy. Thus philosophy has 

recently exhibited the pitiful spectacle — to borrow a phrase 
from Lotze — of '*' a mother wounded by her own children." 
But after all. this may be only a part of the general tendency of 
an age which exalts the young and relatively thoughtless to a 
supremacy over the aged and more mature. And there are some 
plain and gratifying signs that the hostile or negligent attitude 
of science and philosophy toward each other is only temporary. 
This attitude, indeed, must ultimately pass away; since both 
start in the same sources of human nature and have the same 
final purposes in view. Only the emphasis is different ; and also 
the extent to which each carries its endeavor to realize its own 
somewhat peculiar ideals. 

We shall then understand better the true nature of philoso- 
phy if we consider more closely the relations in which it stands 
to the particular sciences. And here the first thing to notice 
ia the important and even essential and permanent resemblances 
of the two. As has already been indicated, both science and 
philosophy arise in the rational, human impulse to understand 
— that is, to explain and interpret — the totality of human expe- 
rience. In their most successful form, both must largely employ 
the same method of carefully guarded and systematic reflective 
thinking. In order, however, to separate between the two, and 
thus to establish in its more modern form the claim for philoso- 
phy to have a place among the intellectual and practical inter- 
ests of the race, as a somewhat independent discipline, it is 
necessary to emphasize further certain of their more important 
differences. At the same time, it can scarcely be too often 
repeated that these differences, no matter how much they are 
accentuated by the progress of both, can never render science 
and philosophy more than relatively independent of each other. 
In the first place, then, the particular sciences are distinguished 
from philosophy, by their standing in a more intimate relation 
to the phenomena, or facts of experience, and to the formulas 



10 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

which express the relations ascertained to exist, with more or 
less of uniformity, among the phenomena. It is by selecting 
certain groups and orders of these phenomena, and by making 
of them a special study, that the so-called particular sciences 
come to exist. They are also sometimes called positive sciences, 
because they are supposed to limit themselves to undeniable 
affirmations of fact, abjuring all metaphysics or appeal to occult 
causes and to other doubtful sources of explanation. As a 
matter of fact, however, no form of human knowledge can 
render itself strictly " particular," .or separate from other 
branches of scientific endeavor. Each part is part of a whole. 
The universe is that whole; and every particular science soon 
finds itself involved with phenomena, and confronted by prob- 
lems, which belong almost equally to the domain cultivated 
by some other particular science. Physics and chemistry can- 
not be kept wholly apart; chemistry is part of biology; biology 
is complicated with psychology; anthropology and sociology 
cannot be cultivated except in dependence upon psychology; 
then follow such pursuits as literature, history, law, theology, 
etc., which, whether we call them sciences or not, are less " par- 
ticular " and " positive," because of their sharing in so many 
and such complex groupings of inter-related phenomena. No 
wonder, then, that there has never been any agreement reached 
as to a special scheme for the strict classification of all the 
so-called sciences. No wonder that the modern scientific expert 
strives to specialize in the knowledge of some limited class of 
phenomena, while at the same time paying respectful attention 
to what other experts have to say about facts and laws in parts 
overlapping his own, but in which these others have chosen to 
erect claims to special expert knowledge. In fact, no mining 
district in the West is more confused in respect of superficial 
and underground claims, both legitimately " staked out " and 
also " jumped," than are the fields of modern science. 

Now, modern philosophy does not invade this field with any 
claim to a special part of it as its very own. It is not a " par- 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS CONCEPTION AND PROBLEMS 11 

ticular " science ; above all it is not " positive," in the posi- 
tivistic meaning of this much-abused word. It is general; it 
aims to be universal. This, too, must not be understood as a 
claim to possess or to dominate the fields belonging to the 
different sciences. The philosopher does not aspire to be the 
president of a syndicate which shall have bought up, or 
grabbed, all of the separate mining claims. On the contrary, 
he just wishes to know how much, and what, genuine product- 
pure gold, etc. — has been extracted and coined from them all. 
To translate the figure of speech: Modern philosophy, in its 
effort to vindicate its right to an important place in the in- 
tellectual and practical interests of the race, is a humble in- 
quirer, sitting at the feet of the particular sciences. It has laid 
aside its former pride of superior lineage and larger heritage. 
Indeed, the aspect of modest confidence and half-expressed awe 
with which many youthful philosophers are looking up, as into 
the face of some divinity, toward the "scientist," to catch his 
approving though somewhat scornful smile, is not by any 
means always justified by the certainties of modern science as 
contrasted with the uncertainties of ancient philosophy. But 
the would-be philosopher who knows his business is well aware 
that the attempt to deduce the facts and laws of the positive 
sciences from some form of a theory of the Idea, or of the Ab- 
solute, must be forever abandoned. Such an one knows also 
that philosophy must take the world as science finds it. For 
it is the real world, and not any merely conjectured or might- 
be world, which philosophy desires to help science more pro- 
foundly to explain, more fully and satisfactorily to interpret. 
And since the philosopher cannot possibly become an expert 
knower at first hand in every branch of human knowledge, can- 
not carefully survey all the groups of phenomena, subject them, 
wherever intrinsically possible, to experimental testing, and 
formulate the uniform sequences and causal relations existing 
between them; he gratefully receives all this at the hands of 
the most competent authorities. Even in this way, if he aims 



12 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

at the completeness of the true philosophical ideal, his task is 
infinitely complex, and destined to ceaseless undoing, — although 
it may be only partial, — and to doing over again in better 
form by other hands. But this is only to say that philosophy, 
like science, is an affair of development, the conclusion of 
which cannot be foreseen in time; and the final form of which 
cannot be predicted with precision. Hence the need which 
modern philosophy has of the particular sciences in their mod- 
ern form is urgent and indispensable. So far forth, philosophy 
is absolutely dependent upon the particular sciences for the 
material which it assumes to treat by the method of reflective 
thinking, in order to vindicate its own right to be regarded by 
these sciences as of important interest to them all. 

Not only for its material, but for its method also, modern 
philosophy is largely indebted to the particular sciences, as they 
are themselves cultivated in modern form. Philosophical 
speculation, which has its head in heaven or in the clouds, 
without having its feet upon the ground, is no longer tolerable. 
But it cannot be forgotten that the methods of the particular 
sciences are themselves a comparatively modern affair. When 
science and philosophy were more frankly mixed, or uncon- 
sciously muddled, than they now are, unverifiable conjecture or 
groundless speculation were thought quite adequate to estab- 
lish the opinions of each in the minds of the majority of the 
devotees of both. And if science is at present more insistent 
upon method than is philosophy, this may be due quite as much 
to differences in the intrinsic character of the two pursuits as to 
differences in the spirit and temper of those who pursue them. 

Doubtless, in modern times the tables seem to have been 
completely turned against philosophy. And, indeed, it is not 
Positivism alone, of the more formal sort, which proposes en- 
tirely to dispense with philosophy. Plainly its divinity is much 
hedged in, wherever it is not wholly dethroned. Just about 
as plainly, this distrust and contempt are largely the fault of 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS CONCEPTION AND PROBLEMS 13 

philosophers themselves. For the " mother of the sciences " has 
been as much discredited by the mob of the immature and 
unscrupulous within her household, as have the particular sci- 
ences which owe to her so largely their birth and early nurture. 
Perhaps the proportion of quacks is no greater in the one than 
in the other. At any rate, there can be little doubt that phi- 
losophy has suffered in the loss of consideration and prestige, 
even more than have the sciences, from sensationalism and the 
attempt to be interesting without being careful of exactness and 
truthfulness, as setting the standards of the highest success. 
Just as we once heard one of the world's greatest mathema- 
ticians say that no person ought to deal with the conceptions and 
formulas of the higher mathematics, who did not appreciate and 
revel in their beauty; so do we think that no one has any busi- 
ness to undertake the technical pursuit of philosophy who does 
not have, and keep, the serious and reverent spirit toward its 
conceptions and its problems. If there is any kind of human 
undertaking for which one ought to prepare one's self by think- 
ing soberly, long, and hard, it is writing or speaking on phi- 
losophy. 

It is only necessary, however, to understand, even super- 
ficially, the nature and achievements of the modern so-called 
positive sciences, in order to discover how the tables may again 
be turned. For, indeed, their need of more sound philosophy 
is very evident and very great. In fact, the whole body of 
them is either penetrated with, or incorporated of, the products 
of reflective thinking, — and this, in philosophy's most despised 
branch of metaphysics. That this is necessarily so, and how it 
is so, will be made clearer when we come to treat of metaphy- 
sics as including every assumption, however unverifiable, and 
every theory, however scientific, which deals with the nature and 
relations of what we call " real," or " actual," whether of 
things or of minds. Even to mention this fact with regard to 
the most ordinary and approved doings of the workmen in the 



14 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

different particular sciences is to call attention to two impor- 
tant offices for science in general which philosophy may fulfill. 
In the first place, it may criticize the categories, or fundamental 
conceptions of the particular sciences. In the second place, it 
may criticize the syntheses of the particular sciences, and may 
supplement them by, or even substitute for them, syntheses 
of its own. 

How naively, and even confusedly, current scientific con- 
ceptions are employed, becomes abundantly evident to the 
most superficial inquirer. In vain have the authors of scien- 
tific treatises striven hitherto in their efforts to agree pre- 
cisely upon what they mean by their terms as applied to 
actual events and real existences. The right of each author 
or investigator in science or philosophy to define for him- 
self the conceptions which he proposes consistently to at- 
tach to the terms he uses, need not be contested. But the 
claim that he is using them in the way most appropriate 
to the correct functioning of the human mind, and to the 
truths of nature's processes and laws, always admits of fur- 
ther critical examination. Moreover, the underlying as- 
sumption of the student of any positive science is that his 
conceptions and conclusions may be brought into some kind 
of harmony with the conceptions and conclusions of the students 
of other and kindred positive sciences. If, therefore, science 
will undertake, and carry to a successful issue, the criticism 
of its own categories, with all the metaphysical implicates 
which these categories involve, no one else should greet the 
achievement' with so supreme satisfaction as the devotee of 
philosophy. But such work of criticism requires a profound 
knowledge of psychology, logic, the theory of knowledge, and 
metaphysics. And why a mind equally gifted and equally 
studious should not acquire, by life-long devotion, some tech- 
nical skill and superiority of method and achievement, in these 
subjects, as well as in those treated by the physical and natural 
sciences, it is difficult to see. We conclude, then, that modern 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS CONCEPTION AND PROBLEMS 15 

science pre-eminently needs modern philosophy for the criti- 
cism of its own (as of all) categories. 

Another urgent need of philosophy by science is closely con- 
nected with the foregoing. The positive sciences do not stop, 
and ought not to stop, to consider the nature, laws, limits and 
guaranty of all knowledge. They have neither the right, nor 
the duty, to be sceptical as to the possibility of discovering the 
actual facts and true causes (verae causae) of what they regard 
as an " external " and independently existent " Nature." The 
proper scientific attitude toward natural phenomena is one of 
naive trust or unquestioning confidence. To express it in more 
strictly philosophical terms, the scientific attitude toward nat- 
ural phenomena is that of common-sense realism. But all the 
assumptions of this attitude, and all its conclusions with refer- 
ence to the essential nature and ultimate meaning of the phy- 
sical universe, are profoundly affected by the opinions which 
one holds with regard to the nature, laws, limits, and guaranty 
of all knowledge. A critical investigation here is undertaken 
by another branch of philosophy, which calls itself epistemology, 
or theory of knowledge. 

Thus far we have confined the consideration of the rela- 
tions of science and philosophy to the natural and physical 
sciences, in the narrower meaning of these terms. In the 
more genial, but defensible meaning of the word " science," 
however, there is a large class of the so-called psychological 
and ethical sciences with which philosophy has even more im- 
portant and mutually helpful relations. In all these cases, the 
remoter relations are mediated by the intimate and essential 
relations which exist between philosophy, on the one hand, 
and psychology and ethics, on the other. Indeed, it is only 
until very recently, and even now not at all universally, or in 
any case very successfully, that the effort has been made to cul- 
tivate psychology and philosophy apart. Locke's Essay has been 
pronounced — however without warrant — "the most important 
offspring of modern philosophy." And even since the time of 



16 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

Locke, in England and Scotland, psychology and philosophy 
have been inextricably mixed. The same thing has been 
scarcely less true in Germany. Even Herbart, who initiated 
one of the most fruitful attempts to subject mental phenomena 
to a strictly scientific treatment, declares : " The whole series 
of the forms of experience must be investigated twice over, 
metaphysically and psychologically. Both investigations must 
be side by side, and be compared together long enough for every 
one to see their complete difference so plainly as never to be 
in danger of confusing them again." But in saying this, 
Herbart meant that mental phenomena, in their appearance in 
consciousness, differ as greatly from their true causes, their real 
explanations, as physical appearances do from the atoms, ions, 
and invisible forces, which are evoked in their explanation. 
Wundt, also, the chief figure in modern experimental psychol- 
ogy, has declared the relation of this science to philosophy to be 
so close and peculiar that " the partition of sovereignty between 
the two is an abstract scheme which, in the presence of actual- 
ity, always appears unsatisfactory." The extreme followers of 
the empirical tendency in Germany, France, and America, 
who have proclaimed the possibility and the necessity of a 
science of " psychology without a soul," have invariably showed 
themselves in fact to be just as naively and crudely meta- 
physical as their brethren in the natural and physical sciences. 
This is so of necessity; for the presence of an agent — call it a 
mind, soul, spirit, or what you will — whose are the phenomena, 
and who manifests its reality to itself in and through the 
phenomena, renders it absolutely and forever impossible to cul- 
tivate a science of psychology without the metaphysical impli- 
cate of a " soul." Even to use the term science without im- 
plying this inference from self-consciousness is absurd. Psy- 
chology may, however, behave, though with less propriety and 
chance of success, as physics and chemistry behave. It may 
accept the uncritical view of common-sense realism, and go 
about its business in the form of discovering and concatenat- 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS CONCEPTION AND PROBLEMS 17 

ing the phenomena. Even thus, however, all the phenomena 
are to be explained only in terms of the self-recognitions of a 
so-called sonl. 

The study of ethics, too, cannot free itself from the obliga- 
tion to become a moral philosophy. For the study of the phe- 
nomena of human conduct, — the noting, tabulating, and statis- 
tical handling of the customs and social relations of men — 
is not ethics at all. We do not touch the border-land of 
man's moral nature and moral life, until we consider these 
customs and relations as themselves related to ideals. To 
study what is simply, — this is not to study ethics. That-which- 
is must be looked at in the light of human conceptions and 
principles as to tliat-which-ought-to-be. But this is at once 
to lift us from what is merely phenomenal into the sphere 
where the phenomena themselves are saturated with thoughts 
and sentiments and implicates, having reference to realities 
which, by their very nature, cannot be given a concrete pre- 
sentation in consciousness. The sources, underlying principles, 
and the sanctions, of these ideals afford unfailing stimulus 
to, and make unceasing demands upon, the cultured insight 
and disciplined reflective thinking of the reflective mind. 

In these and other ways do all the psychological and ethical 
sciences appeal for help to philosophy. The more complex 
these sciences become, the more distinct and imperative is the 
appeal. Thus it is still, and probably always will be, more 
correct to speak of a philosophy of literature, a philosophy of 
history, a philosophy of art, than to speak, with any strictness, 
of a science of either of these subjects. Even that conglomerate 
of scientific fragments which is called " sociology," or by some 
similar name, is much more dependent on psychology and on 
ethics for any approach to an independent scientific form, than 
upon the application of scientific method to any separable 
groups of phenomena 

There is a second important respect in which the particular 
sciences, both the physical and the psychological and moral, 



18 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

are in need of philosophy. This is for the undertaking of 
the supremely difficult, and indeed never to be completed, task 
of attempting a synthesis of human knowledge. The hope Of 
making a speculative leap to the height of that one Principle, 
or indissoluble corporation of principles, from which we may 
deduce with a quasi-mathematical certainty, the explanation of 
all human experience — whether this hope be turned toward 
the scientific imagination for its latest and most perfect con- 
struction of the Ether, or to theological faith for its most 
rational conception of God — may quite properly be abandoned. 
If it is the province of either science or philosophy ever to 
realize this hope, its actualization is obviously to be indefinitely 
delayed. It may be that there is no such principle in reality. 
Indeed, the picture of an ever-developing Universe, as well as 
the conception of an Absolute Person, is not favorable to so 
machine-like a process. That is no genuine development which 
contains all in the first; that is no true person, who predes- 
tines all by one act of Will. 

i All the particular sciences strive, however, to gather together 
their discoveries in some unifying way; they aim to reduce to 
the smallest number the kinds of entities, the efficient causes, 
the formulas called laws, or principles, with which they have 
to deal. In a word, they aim at unification, at synthesis. They 
are jealous of differences and contradictions; they abhor gaps 
and inconsistencies; they are provoked and stimulated by ex- 
ceptions; they feel in duty bound to expand their formulas, to 
modify their hypotheses, and even to alter their conceptions of 
law, when newly discovered and incompatible phenomena seem 
to demand this. In their relations with one another, however, 
the attempt to reconcile differences, to adjust claims, and by 
introducing some larger measure of harmony, to approach with 
better spirit, if not with larger success, the higher and highest 
possible forms of synthesis, is not an easy task for the scien- 
tific mind. As we have already said, it is not an easy task, 
but a supremely difficult task, for any form of reflective think- 
ing. If, however, the student of philosophy, in its historical 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS CONCEPTION AXD PROBLEMS 19 

development and in its scientific foundations, is not somehow 
especially qualified for undertaking this task, then the fault 
is his own personal fault. For the philosophical spirit and the 
study of philosophy are the best possible preparation for making 
such diffi cult speculative syntheses. 

It would seem plain, then, that modern science and mod- 
ern philosophy are reciprocally dependent, and in constant 
need, each of the other. Philosophy needs the spirit that ap- 
plies the scientific method to all the ascertained truths and 
verifiable conceptions, which the particular sciences can impart. 
These sciences, in turn, need philosophy as the teacher of psy- 
chology, logic, and ethics, as the critic of their fundamental 
conceptions and underlying assumptions: and as an aid to har- 
mony and unification of the facts and laws which are the more 
special possession of each. And if science and philosophy, in 
these modern times, do not actually fraternize and greatly as- 
sist each other, the fault and the disgrace cannot be charged 
to the nature of either, but must be laid at the door of certain 
ignorant and crabbed students of both. 

The attempt has customarily been made to render the defi- 
nition of philosophy clearer by stating it in terms of the solu- 
tion of some one Problem. This attempt, too, has led to no 
little confusion. For the inquiry. " What is the Problem of 
Philosophy? " admits of as many different answers as there are 
different views concerning the nature, sources, and method 
of philosophy. Of course, its problem, since its method is that 
of reflective thinking upon the facts and laws of human ex- 
perience, is one of explanation and interpretation. But all 
the problems of the particular sciences have a similar end in 
view. Thus science and philosophy agree in their effort to 
inve?t:^:.:f the grounds of Being and of Knowledge: and thus, 
more and more, to make the organism of human thinking a 
faithful representative of the organism of the world. 

It would seem more profitable, then, to speak of the prob- 
lems of philosophy, and to postpone for the present the attempt 
to summarize them all in the statement of one supreme and 



20 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

all-inclusive problem. This may be done in dependence upon 
the distinctions already made, which, however, only suggest 
the vague and movable boundaries between the fields of the 
modern particular sciences and the domain claimed as pe- 
culiarly its own by modern philosophy. From this point of 
view, therefore, we need to recall what has already been said 
about the relations between these sciences and the attempt to 
render philosophy a quasi-independent discipline. First of 
all, then, there is the Problem of Knowledge. What is it to 
know? What can man know? What view must we take of the 
claims of Dogmatism, Scepticism, Criticism, and Agnosticism — 
of all the more prominent attitudes of the human mind in 
respect to a theory of cognition? Inseparably correlated with 
this, and indeed a sort of other side to the same shield, is 
the so-called Problem of Being, which is proposed by the naive 
or reasoned metaphysics of ordinary knowledge and of the 
positive sciences. What are the categories, or — so to say — ■ 
necessary qualifications of a claim to belong to the really ex- 
istent? How shall we interpret these categories, and harmon- 
ize them in one Theory of Reality, which may be found to be 
really, though unconsciously, assumed by all of the particular 
sciences? There are, also, then, the problems afforded by the 
Ideals of humanity in the two principal forms of the Ideal of 
Ethics and the Ideal of ^Esthetics. It will be found that these 
ideals, not only afford sources and principles for the regulation 
of human conduct and every form of artistic endeavor, but that 
they also interpenetrate and largely control the assumptions 
and inductions of the physical and natural sciences. And, 
finally, there is the Problem of the so-called Absolute — that 
supreme but never perfectly attainable goal of human endeavor, 
recognized as such by both philosophy and science. This may 
also be called the Problem of the Ideal-Real ; for its solution, 
if it could be found, would help us to interpret aright the 
more nearly ultimate meaning of the answer to all the other 
problems. 



CHAPTER II 

PHILOSOPHY: ITS METHOD AND ITS DIVISIONS 

The most essential thing about the method of philosophy is 
its spirit. Without the right spirit no high measure of success 
in philosophizing can possibly be attained. It was this thought 
which the great Greek thinker, Plato, forever embodied in the 
very term "philosophy." The wisdom (ao<pia) which is iden- 
tical with absolute knowledge ( kruaTijuy ), belongs to God 
alone ; to man it belongs, the rather, to be a lover of knowledge. 
And since in Plato's thought, philosophy moved in the sphere 
of the Idea, which is the aesthetically and ethically perfect of 
its kind, the highest in the kingdom of ideas is the Idea of the 
Good. Therefore the true philosopher is he who sets his affec- 
tions on what is most real and good; and the impulse to phi- 
losophize is a deep and passionate longing of human nature to 
have the most intimate intercourse with what is noblest and 
best in the realm of truth and reality. The root of philos- 
ophy is Eros — the effort of mortal man to attain the immortal. 
Such is the thought also of some of the Upanishads. 

This fanciful and figurative way of characterizing the nature 
of philosophy and the spirit which belongs to the true philos- 
opher has, when translated into sober prose, been on the whole, 
illustrated and enforced by its history. In general, thinkers 
and writers on philosophical problems have regarded their task 
as one of high moral and intellectual concernment. Oftener 
than otherwise, they have considered it as arising from an im- 
pulse intimately related to the sources of religious experience; 
and they have looked upon philosophy itself as a sort of hand- 
maid, or partner, or faithful critic and censor, of religion. 
In fact, also, the distinction between theology and one of the 



22 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

most important branches of philosophy cannot be defined or 
practically enforced. A spirit 'serious, impressed with the 
mystery of the world of external nature and of human life, 
passionately — however fallibly — -devoted to the exploration and 
defense of the most comprehensive and important truths, has, 
with few exceptions, qualified that distinguished line of thinkers 
who have most influenced the reflective thought of the race. 
Even where they have been sharply, or perhaps scornfully, criti- 
cal of the existing dogmatism in morals and religion, the 
display of this temper has been most frequently motived by the 
true spirit of philosophy. The spirit of frivolity, of conten- 
tion, of scoffing criticism for its own sake, of selfish seeking for 
distinction, of ambition for mere novelty and of bidding for 
applause, are not the spirit of the philosopher. 

Briefly analyzed, the true philosophical spirit shows itself, 
first of all, as a spirit of freedom. It demands the rights of 
reason absolutely untrammelled by extraneous bonds or obliga- 
tions. But this is because of its faith that human reason is 
the organ of Divine Eeason, the source of the light that 
" lighteth every man coming into the world." In this respect, 
at least, every kind and school of philosophy is rationalistic. 
As Chalybaus has well said, the free critical movement which 
prevails in all the sciences of the day is essentially philosophy. 
It is probable, that modern science owes its freedom more to 
the devout and truth-loving heretics, who revolted against the 
principle of extraneous control of reason by authority, than 
to any other class of men. But the positive side of this philo- 
sophical freedom is an obligation to examine critically all the 
presuppositions of every particular form of human knowledge. 
The obligation extends even to those postulates of all reason 
on which philosophy itself is founded. The end desired and 
approached, however, is the confidence of reason in itself pro- 
gressively to attain to truth, when open to the Source of truth 
and faithfully obeying its own laws. The freedom of philos- 
ophy, therefore, does not imply the possession by reason of 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS METHOD AND DIVISIONS 23 

the power to be either more or less than human reason. It is 
chiefly because Kant attacked this problem with such dili- 
gence, acuteness of criticism, and complete renunciation of 
previously existing authorities, that he took so controlling a 
place in the development of modern philosophy. 

The spirit of philosophy is also one of complete and unselfish 
devotion to truth. This spirit also it shares with the best of 
the students of the particular sciences. Xor is the essential 
duty to maintain such a partnership at all abridged by the 
undoubted fact that the professional teachers of both science 
and philosophy have not infrequently had an eye on their 
own fame and advancement, or on the security of their ten- 
ure of office, and their standing with the appointing power, 
rather than both eyes, with a single heart, solely on the 
truth. 

From this spirit of devotion to truth, as in the case of 
science so in the case of philosophy, there arises a spirit of 
humility and teachableness, mingled with independence. The 
great discoverers in science have in general had this philosoph- 
ical spirit, just as the greater minds in philosophy have been 
willing to sit at the feet of science and be taught its discov- 
eries and learn the proper application to their subjects, of the 
so-called scientific methods. Neither can afford to be arrogant 
in the presence of the other. It is confessedly true that phi- 
losophy must have the humble and docile spirit toward science. 
And, conversely, there is truth in HaeckeFs complaint of " the 
lack of philosophical culture of most of the physicists of the 
day," as of those who " cherish the strange illusion that they 
can construct the edifice of natural science from facts without a 
philosophical connection of the same." For the prophecy of 
Herbart will always come true : " It cannot be otherwise than 
that the neglect of philosophy should result in a frivolous or 
perverted treatment of the fundamental principles of all the 
sciences." With the spirit of humility and teachableness goes, 
as a matter of course, the spirit of patience. 



24 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

For reasons such as these the dependence of philosophy upon 
the mental and moral characteristics of the philosophical 
thinker is especially close. More than in any of the particular 
sciences, it is the man himself, as a rational self-conscious 
spirit, who, in philosophy, chiefly determines the correct and 
successful use of the method. It follows from the very nature 
of philosophy and of its problems, that the ideal of a com- 
pleted philosophical system will never be realized; but the con- 
tribution toward it which every workman can make depends 
in no small degree upon the wealth of his experience, matur- 
ing into personal character. 

It must not be concluded, however, that thorough acquaint- 
ance with, and faithful use of, the proper philosophical method 
is of small importance. This method can be described in its 
main features as being scientific, although it has not the same 
definite and restricted characteristics which belong to the 
method peculiar to any one of the positive sciences. 

The methods of research and of testing results, as employed 
by each of the modern positive sciences, are developments which 
have proceeded hand in hand with the developments that con- 
stitute the body of truth ascertained by the same sciences. In 
many of them, instruments constructed upon the principles of 
the science, as already discovered, have become indispensable 
for making new discoveries. This, for example, is true of the 
microscope, spectroscope, and all the modern methods of 
analysis, in the physico-chemical sciences; of microscope, cul- 
tures, methods of obtaining and using staining fluids, serums, 
etc., in the biological sciences. Plainly, we cannot speak of 
the use by philosophy of any similar forms of the scientific 
method. The so-called " introspective method" in psychology, 
which is the indispensable adjunct of every other method, more 
nearly resembles the way of arriving at conclusions which is 
appropriate to philosophy. And, indeed, let the individual 
thinker strive as he may to free his mind from prejudice, and 
to broaden and deepen his thoughts so as to include ail that is 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS VZTHOD AXD DIVISIONS H 



O :0 _':.: zrzi-zizi-i"i'. Iizii-irl:n H HI =75^ 
;:H:::;I- i= HleH 2 z-r:-Es.5irr Hiti::::!-::: : :~t it is 

nfiZi 2:2 ":" :zt1 :HO 7:t :~:r~ mn n~=r, in Hrge 
v::. On I :0 5 :/;.:: :~ :: :0: :::OrZ.= H iHl.:->:t1t 5 
0: — HOOz Hi :vz. :x72:H::2::. 

In O.7-: H"s. H"-fTer. H: m - HHHinH ---• — 
--.. - :: :~ H: 2 r^:n H HHOs.'H.t H:n 0:5 :^n 
silfs." : ; :: ~t7t. :•: n:rH HO::: mi :~:r_ ;:z::n."::. 



:rn:n?. znienj ::z:::ns :ne ::.:-:^;::.:r :: :n: n::::~ 
::: 01.: :H0: 5 ::'::: :nn£ :: :OinO H: ::0:r=. :il n:: Or 
:.:n ; :H inn:. _ 2.: :::_::. _:•:- 1: ::n 7 Hi nnnO:~r :: inOni- 
H:: mi rHH ::0::i :: tOHtO H: H:n?:H:5. — Hr_ 2 :nOi: 

; HO «tOH:, it:: He r7:H:ms tOO ;:Ong in =n: 
sTriiH -27 — OO2H :::: pOOziypHrH Li^iiz.. H: i:-:. H:::-- 
::::. :: :::::: hOn^OO —HO :~:r. rr::::: :::: 0::r: :: I:niini^I 
:: ::.: H - ::H::s :: I: 2 He::t:::: ::H H:!:: in :n~ H ;ne 
t:::::H:: ^:::i:^- 

0::::: 2:: 0.::: Hs::: H sriH:?. :n 2::n2H:.2n:e ~H.h 

-"HOr. ii :::\HrO: H: H: 5n::^iifH ,:: :: n:H:0 in HiH>5> 

:::.:::::r. 00: rHsz H ::.:>: is s:-::__.:: ":::::l:. ""rnOrrjH 

-H0«:-0_- H mini. Orr:::in::z:H riyOirHry 2.2s id 

2mOHH:ii — Hi :iii:$-::i~. :: in:OH -2O2: 



_ c - J- 



26 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ment for the successful pursuit of philosophy. It is, the rather, 
allied with the physical and natural sciences. But the more 
ultimate problems raised when one inquires as to the existence 
and nature of the soul, and as to the soul's relation to the 
body and to the external world, are not only in themselves 
considered, among the most profound of philosophical prob- 
lems, but they are also metaphysical inquiries of such a nature 
that one's attitude toward them essentially influences, if it does 
not strictly determine, one's conclusions with regard to all the 
problems of philosophy. The reason that is in you and me is 
indeed our own; but it is also our share in the universal rea- 
son. 

The second subject with which the would-be philosopher 
must be familiar in order to make the best use of method in 
philosophizing, is the history of philosophy. There is no in- 
tellectual interest of the race, — not even any one of the most 
positive of the sciences, — which can be understood, much less 
cultivated, in its larger aspects, without an acquaintance with 
its history. If, for example, the modern physicist could be 
made to appreciate how, in the historical development of his 
science, the vain attempt has been frequently made, to explain 
the phenomena while dispensing with either of the three cate- 
gories of " Substance," " Force," and " Law," he would not 
be so likely to contribute one more effort to the same inevitable 
result of failure. Entity theories, that have no dynamics in 
them; dynamical theories that deny substantial existences; 
and both, when they overlook the immanence of mind; — all 
three are refuted by the history of physics. More emphatically 
true is this certainty of failure when any system of philosophy 
neglects to take account of either of those greater truths, the 
exclusive or too emphatic recognition of which, has given rise 
to the endless succession of schools in philosophy. Some few 
such works have indeed had the characteristics of those great 
pieces of literature to which the race has attached the rare fame 
of securing a value for all time. But most have resembled the 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS METHOD AND DIVISIONS 27 

modern novel, which, becomes popular by pandering to the crav- 
ing for sensationalism, and is the more quickly thrown aside 
when it ceases to satisfy even this craving. 

The study of the works of the masters in philosophy, and 
the tracing of the currents of reflective thinking as they have 
swept back and forth, or have stagnated in certain quarters, 
is part of the preparation essential to the modern method of 
philosophizing. Our philosophy to-day is only to-day's frag- 
ment of the reflective thinking of the race. The historical and 
pragmatic view of man's development in reflective thinking is 
a necessary organ of philosophical research. 

An acquaintance with the particular sciences in their modern 
form is the third requisite for the successful pursuit of philos- 
ophy. This must be understood, however, with many grains of 
allowance. With the endless details and technical methods 
of these sciences, it is an impossible task for any human mind 
to keep up even a superficial acquaintance. Indeed, to attempt 
the task would render one unfit for the successful pursuit of 
philosophy. But it is not with these details and technical 
methods that philosophy chiefly concerns itself. Philosophy's 
concern is rather with the underlying assumptions of all human 
science, and with its most general categories and principles. To 
learn these, as has already been explained, philosophy sits at 
the feet of the sciences, in a humble, teachable, and patient, 
but free critical spirit. 

It has already been repeatedly affirmed that the method 
characteristic of philosophy is the extent and thoroughness 
with which it makes use of the mind's powers of rational re- 
flection. This vague statement may be still further defined by 
speaking of the method of philosophy as both analytic and syn- 
thetic. The analytic part of philosophical discipline concerns 
itself chiefly with the collection and critical sifting of material. 
This material comes from the three sources of rational psy- 
chology, the history of philosophy, and the particular sciences 
on the side of their postulates and most general conceptions 



28 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

and principles. In philosophizing we discern, select, and freely 
criticize as much as possible of this material. 

But attempts at synthesis follow the work of analysis; and 
the conceptions, truths, and principles discovered by analysis 
are the ground of standing from which, so to say, the syn- 
thesis of philosophy takes its flight. Just as all the particular 
sciences aim at a harmonizing synthesis, which shall accom- 
plish a more complete appearance of unity within each one's 
allotted sphere, so does philosophy aim at a still higher and 
more completely harmonizing synthesis, which may result in the 
semblance of a unity covering all their particular spheres. 
Every time science speaks of a Universe, a Nature, or a World 
which is in any manner or measure One, it gives the hint of 
a similar attempt at synthesis. Philosophy aims to expose 
the content of this Unity; to show how, in more precise man- 
ner and larger measure, this " Universe," this " Nature," this 
"World," may be conceived of as really one. 

In a word, then, the method of philosophy may be described 
as an attempt by reflective thinking at the highest and most 
complete synthesis of principles, based upon the most thorough 
and exhaustive analysis. 

The division of the different intellectual interests of human- 
ity, and of their products, depends upon the definition of each, 
and upon the method employed in the cultivation of each. 
Thus the proper classification of the positive sciences still 
affords a problem to be fought over by those who, for the most 
part, prefer logical arrangement to substantial knowledge. The 
same thing is true, in only smaller degree, of the so-much con- 
tested method of making divisions, or fence-lines, between 
these sciences; and of breaking up into small allotments the 
larger domains previously assigned to each. But nature does 
not draw fixed lines for the classification of her products, 
whether Things or Minds; and her seemingly most reasonable 
achievements do not easily submit to a logical schematizing. 
"Divide and rule" is indeed a well-worn maxim for the stu- 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS METHOD AND DIVISIONS 29 

dent of physical and vital processes; but for science, the divid- 
ing is profitable, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the 
concentration and increase of intensity which the limitation 
permits. Indeed, excessive attention to mere classifying tends 
to pettiness and to an exaggeration of the value of specializa- 
tion rather than to the gaining of a firm grasp upon those 
greater problems of science, toward the solution of which all the 
particular sciences have their contribution to make. Too fre- 
quently, also, it arises out of an ambition on the part of the 
so-called discoverer to signalize the distinction with his own 
name. 

What is true of division between and within the particular 
sciences is true — although to a less extent — of the Divisions 
of Philosophy. But there cannot easily be quite the same con- 
fusion and debate over this subject as over the classification 
of the particular sciences. For the details of the actual world 
— the infinite variety and cross-divisions, the seeming cross- 
purposes and baffling contradictions, of Reality — have already 
been reduced to some order when they are handed over for 
further reflection by science to philosophy. Thus philosophy 
escapes many of the annoyances and perplexities which fol- 
low from continuous wranglings over the often unimportant 
matter of making divisions. 

For our part, we take little interest in debate about the best 
method of arranging the several groups of philosophical ques- 
tions; and we have no disposition at all to quarrel with any 
one who prefers a different arrangement from our own. While 
we cannot wholly agree with Lotze when he says that each one 
of these groups " appears to be self-coherent and to require an 
investigation of a specific kind " ; we are entirely of his opinion 
that " little value " is to be attributed " to the reciprocal ar- 
rangement of the single groups under one another." The history 
of the subject shows, however, that certain great divisions have 
been recognized from the beginning of systematic philosophy 
down to the present time. It also throws light upon the fun- 



30 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

damental and unchanging truth that the principles of Being 
and of Knowledge may be treated as giving rise to two some- 
what distinct groups of problems ; and yet that these groups are 
everywhere in contact, and are dependent for their life and 
formative energy upon each other, at many vital points. Still 
further: In both the realm of physical nature and the realm 
of thought, man recognizes the influence, and the presence in 
concrete form, of ideals. The distinction which is thus forced 
upon our consideration, between the fact of what-is and the 
idea of what-ought-to-be, has also served as a basis for another 
way of arranging the groups of philosophical problems. 

It is only, then, as a matter of convenience that the fol- 
lowing Divisions of Philosophy, or groupings of its inter-re- 
lated problems, are proposed in the form of a Table: 

I. Philosophy of the II. Philosophy of the 

Real: Metaphysics, Ideal: Idealology, or 

in the wider mean- Rational Teleology, 

ing of the term, as 1. Ethics, or Moral 

belonging to all the Philosophy (the 

particular sciences. Ideal of Conduct, 

1. Theory of Knowl- sometimes called 
edge (Epistemology). Practical Philosophy) 

2. ^Esthetics (the Ideal 

2. Metaphysics, as On- j Art) 

tology. in. The Supreme Ideal- 

A. Philosophy of Na- Real, The Absolute, 

ture. The Final Problem of 



B. Philosophy of Mind. 



Synthetic Philosophy, 
—especially in the 
form of Philosophy 
of Religion. 



And now dropping all technicalities, let us gather together 
and express in more popular form, the results of our inquiry 
into the sources, nature, method and divisions of philosophy. 
The roots of the impulses which have led in comparatively 
modern times to the attempt at cultivating systematic philos- 
ophy as an intellectual interest separate from the particular sci- 
ences, lie deep in human nature. They are so deep as to be 
ineradicable. The brain of humanity would have to be reor- 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS METHOD AXD DIVISIONS 31 

ganized, the heart of humanity torn asunder, and the life- 
blood cooled in its veins, in order wholly to destroy these im- 
pulses. The first and most pressing demands for knowledge 
on the part of the race do, indeed, concern the practical prob- 
lems of physical needs and physical comfort. The better grati- 
fication of those demands furnishes a call to the study of the 
forces and products of nature which contribute to the satisfac- 
tion of these needs and to the increase of this comfort. But 
such impulses alone do not account for the rise and the devel- 
opment of the particular sciences. The desire to know, for 
the sake of the mind's satisfaction in knowledge, furnishes an 
impulse as old and as universal as the history of the race. 
In this impulse chiefly it is that the particular sciences have 
their birth. 

Xo form of science, however, — and the less, the more pre- 
cise and particular it is, — can fully satisfy mans desire for 
knowledge. This is true of knowledge, whether regarded as 
wisdom, and leading to right and successful practice of affairs, 
or regarded as so-called " knowledge for its own sake/' For 
the human mind, when once aroused, longs to know the world 
as a whole, as a unity which shall somehow solve the puzzles 
and contradictions of man's concrete experiences. To live the 
fullest life and to obtain the completest satisfaction, we seem to 
require, as something over and above every particular form 
of adaptation to environment, an adaptation to the Universe 
in the large. 

How shall I adjust myself to air, water and soil, to forest, 
brook, and sky, so as to live in comfort and plenty? How 
shall I adapt my actions so as to propitiate and gain the bene- 
ficent, while avoiding the evil, influences of the invisible spirits 
which people and vitalize all these material objects ? These are 
questions which stimulated the desire for knowledge of the so- 
called primitive man. But when, through the progress of the 
sciences or of the religious creeds, which gather and impart 
such items of knowledge, the conception of man's environment 
changes and expands, the desire to reap the full benefit of a 



32 , KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

more satisfactory adjustment to this environment also changes 
and expands. The knowledge of physical forces becomes more 
complex and profound. The mastery of these forces becomes 
more complete; they are made more manageable and serviceable 
to mankind. Why should I not share in this knowledge, to 
the better satisfaction of my intellectual interests, and to the 
increased benefit of the conduct of life? The laws of man's 
social nature and social development, the history of humanity's 
achievements, and the conditions of its moral improvement' and 
welfare, are being disclosed. Why should I not learn how to 
rise in the social scale; and why not have the means for the 
realization of my ambition to rise placed within my grasp and 
at my disposal? But there is coming to humanity an increas- 
ing recognition of some sort of fundamental Unity, which may 
bind together and furnish the Ultimate Cause of my environ- 
ment and my experiences; and not of mine only but of those 
of the race. Why should not I wish to know what others have 
thought about this problem; and why should I not, having such 
knowledge of others' thinking, resolve also to think reflectively 
for myself? Nor is the last problem purely speculative. On 
the contrary, according to the answer which I give to it — how- 
ever doubtfully and tentatively — will largely be conditioned 
my estimate as to what in my own experience and conduct 
shall be esteemed of highest value. My theory of reality will 
inevitably go far toward determining the theory and practice 
of my daily life. But to reflect upon this class of problems 
is to philosophize. To come to conclusions upon them, how- 
ever negative or sceptical the conclusions may be, is to have 
some theory as to the meaning of the World, and as to the cor- 
rect interpretation of the values of Life. And to put such a 
theory into control over conduct is to live philosophically; or 
in other words, it is to live rationally, and as a man ought 
to live. For it is in these most exalted realms of thought and 
of conduct that philosophy unites with morality and religion to 
secure the fullest measure of the highest good for a rational 
mind. 



CHAPTER III 

SCHOOLS OP PHILOSOPHY 

That the development of man's reflective thinking, which we 
call philosophy, should result in diverse answers to its in- 
quiries, becomes a matter of course when we consider the limita- 
tions of the human mind and the essential character of philo- 
sophical problems. For the same reasons the thinkers them- 
selves, the so-called philosophers, may be divided into groups 
which emphasize their similarities or their differences. Hence 
arise what historians are pleased to call " schools of philoso- 
phy." The existence of these schools, their perpetual recurrence 
in somewhat changed form, their ceaseless discussions and wran- 
glings, and their failure, after all, to arrive at any considerable 
agreement, have been made the reproach of philosophy. Nor 
is there anything new in this. The earliest works in Greek 
reflective thinking abound in criticism of the popular or " com- 
mon-sense " views of life and reality, and in gentle or more 
pungent sarcasms, directed toward the sophists as pretenders 
to scientific but uncritical knowledge. On the other hand, 
Greek comedy is full of passages ridiculing the substance of 
alleged truth, and the style of expressing it, which character- 
ized the leaders and their disciples in " divine " philosophy. 
Then and there, as everywhere and at all times, much of the 
best and most influential thought took other literary forms than 
that of technical philosophizing. Indeed, in point of real 
merit, both for ideas and for the manner of their expression, 
the greater Greek tragedies have few peers in the literature of 
ethical philosophy. And in more modern times, Goethe's 
"Faust" is as truly a work of philosophy as is Spinoza's 
* Ethica." 

There is much misunderstanding in the popular mind about 

33 



34 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

the nature and significance of schools of philosophy. No small 
part of this misunderstanding has been fostered by the pedagog- 
ical awkwardness and primness of the historians of the sub- 
ject. For the writers on the history of philosophy, in their 
vain effort to give the appearance of a science to the narration 
of the truth, are prone, like other so-called " scientists," to 
deal with their material in a more imposing way by establishing 
in it a system of doubtful or imperfect classifications. Hence 
the manner of grouping (a grouping which is not infrequently 
a kind of inconsiderate throwing together) different thinkers 
and writers, under characteristics conveniently chosen to suit 
his purposes by the classifier himself. Briefly to explain philos- 
ophers as belonging to such and such schools is much easier, 
and sounds quite as learned, as sympathetically to interpret' 
the totality of their philosophical thoughts. A further pretence 
of writing a scientific history may then be made by showing 
how each thinker's school was determined for him, mechanic- 
ally as it were, by the physical and intellectual environment 
in the midst of which his thinking was done. 

In order properly to understand the character and the sig- 
nificance of schools of philosophy, the following truths should 
constantly be kept in mind : In philosophy, as in war, science, 
and religion, there have been a few, but only a few, really 
great and epoch-making names. These men cannot be ex- 
plained as the product of their own time; and while they un- 
doubtedly manifest their personal qualities in the character of 
their thinking, they cannot fitly be spoken of as belonging to 
any particular school. To account for them, we may as well 
call them " inspired geniuses " ; for they give voice and shape 
to the unexpressed, or only half-expressed, thoughts and senti- 
ments of their times, and of succeeding times, regarding the 
most satisfactory interpretation of Nature and of human Life. 
This they do, because they are endowed with a blending of pro- 
found intuition with that ability for calm, prolonged reflection, 
which is pervaded with the free and reverent spirit of philos- 



SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY 35 

ophy. Such is the special fitness required for the highest suc- 
cess in this kind of intellectual and spiritual endeavor. Thus 
these geniuses become founders of schools, only in a modified 
meaning of the latter word. Their school-craft is not by 
deliberate purpose or because their thinking is confined within 
the limits of any one " school-form " ; it is rather because they 
naturally and inevitably attract to themselves a body of dis- 
ciples for some one or more of the principal aspects of their 
universal and eternally true thoughts. The following which 
they create consists of those who find themselves thinking essen- 
tially like these masters, in respect to some one or more of their 
dominating convictions and opinions. 

On this fact depends another; for if we seek to know in its 
completeness what these greater thinkers have revealed about 
the various problems with which philosophy is chiefly con- 
cerned, we shall find that they have, in general, appreciated, 
and striven to blend in harmony, all the truths accredited by 
all the principal schools. The scholastic treatment of the 
average historian, therefore, does them injustice. In ancient 
times, for example, we are invited to notice the differences be- 
tween the methods and conclusions of Plato and those of 
Aristotle; in more modern times, of Spinoza and Kant. These 
are then so sharply contrasted as apparently to make it neces- 
sary for the student to assign them to different schools of 
philosophy. But, in fact, both Plato and Aristotle were about 
equally idealists, as well as realists, and realists as truly as 
idealists; while both Spinoza and Kant strove, each in his own 
way, to satisfy the demands of a critical scepticism and an 
ethical absolutism. Among the multitude of lesser thinkers 
also, there is always a rational and a sentimental revolt against 
having their opinions on philosophical subjects classed as be- 
longing to this or that school. And, indeed, what seems to 
afford so much satisfaction to the average critic or writer on 
the history of philosophy, is a source of dissatisfaction to every 
honest thinker on philosophical problems. For every such 



36 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

thinker, classification of the currently adopted and tolerably 
rigid sort, is apt not to accord with the facts. 

In truth, the diversity of philosophical endeavors and con- 
clusions, and the subtilty of grades and transitions, are such 
that any approach to the kind of classification which the 
ordinary theory of schools of philosophy demands, is quite im- 
possible. Instead of this variety being made a source of re- 
proach to philosophy, it should the rather be regarded as a 
testimony to its abounding life. And when the wealth of the 
material, and the complexity of the problems, in the form 
in which these sources are explored and made available for 
philosophy by the modern sciences, are largely increased, then, 
of necessity, diversities multiply in the details of the method 
and conclusions of philosophy. There are at present — to illus- 
trate the matter by one of the particular sciences — perhaps 
some two hundred different theories of evolution advocated by 
different workmen in the field of biology. All these theories 
have alleged facts in their support; but all these theories 
united do not begin to account for, or successfully interpret, 
all the fact's. For life is ever larger and more complex than 
theories of life. That-which-is far outstretches man's feeble 
efforts to tell what-it-is and how-it-came-to-be. If this is true 
of one limited domain of science, how could it fail to be true 
of human thought when dealing with the problem of the Being 
of the World in the large? This third contention, which dis- 
closes the essential life of reason, cannot profitably be forgotten 
in dealing with the subject suggested by the title — " Schools of 
Philosophy." 

Yet again : amidst all the diversity of philosophical opinions, 
with its increase rather than diminution in modern times, 
there has been a certain growing tendency to substantial agree- 
ments. As to the general conception of evolution — its verity, 
immense range of application, and explanatory value — few, if 
any, students of the phenomena of plant and animal life 
entertain any measure of doubt. If they were all as ready to 



SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY 37 

discover and promote agreement, irrespective of noted names 
and notable theories, as they are to emphasize and exploit the 
divergences covered by the names and theories; some compre- 
hensive doctrine of evolution would make a better showing than 
can now be claimed for any of the two hundred views, differ- 
ing as they do in respect to details. The same thing, in an even 
more striking and larger way, we shall find to be true of philos- 
ophy. No realism can be so extreme as to take no account of 
the reality of the ideal. No idealism can remove itself so high 
above the ground of reality as not to touch it at many points. 
No dogmatism can wholly avoid self-criticism; and criticism 
cannot take it's start from other than a dogmatic point of 
standing; while the scepticism in which it too often terminates 
is compelled, in self-justification, to resort to a species of 
dogmatism again. Schopenhauer cannot make the Will to be 
All, without introducing Intellect as a sort of second fiddle 
necessary to the universal harmony. The Hegelian Eeason, in 
order to accomplish or explain anything, must figure as an 
active reason; otherwise, as an all-embracing and all-creative 
Will. The very foundations of so-called Pragmatism, with its 
foolish fury toward the systems called by their older and more 
respectable names, are themselves laid in Eationalism and 
Idealism. Its truths have all of them long ago been duly 
incorporated, as fragments, into both these so-called schools. 
And how shall one rationalize experience with the real world 
of things and minds, unless one finds the influence of ideals in 
this real world; or how shall one idealize this same world with- 
out taking counsel of the typical conceptions of human reason ? 
With this modified meaning of the term we may now briefly 
consider the principal causes and chief characteristics of the 
different schools of philosophy. The principal causes may be 
classified under two heads. These are, first, the limited char- 
acter of all human thought; and, second, the complex and in- 
definite character of the problems proposed in the name of 
philosophy. 



38 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

Every individual thinker has, of course, a certain tempera- 
ment, a certain limited culture, and certain personal prefer- 
ences and somewhat peculiar points of view. If the tempera- 
ment is marked, and its tendencies habitually uncontrolled; 
if the culture is narrow and confined within the outlines of 
some one intellectual interest to the exclusion of others; and 
if the preferences and peculiar points of view induce unyield- 
ing prejudices ; then the very individuality of the thinker deter- 
mines within shrunken limitations the so-called school to which 
he must belong. Doubtless, even in the case of the most nobly 
free and universal minds, temptations and tendencies to the 
uncritical embrace of certain conclusions are not always suc- 
cessfully resisted. There is, therefore, something of the tem- 
peramental, the suspiciously individualistic and unduly preju- 
diced, in every one's philosophizing. Too much, however, may 
easily be made of all this. And there is no more reason why 
one's philosophy should be tainted with prejudices arising from 
these sources, than why one's science, or one's rules of conduct, 
should be ill affected in the same way. Indeed, to suspect 
your neighbor of yielding to temperament, and of showing 
bigotry, because he does not agree with you in an issue deter- 
mined by reflective thinking, may be as ungenerous as to accuse 
him of immorality because he differs from you in a matter of 
the right and wrong of conduct. The mind truly embued 
with the spirit of philosophy is even more on the alert to guard 
against the errors which arise from prejudice, haste, confusion 
as to causes and issues, than is the mind trained in the method 
of the physical sciences. A part of every one's preparation for 
serious work of reflective thinking is the study of his " per- 
sonal equation." 

There are limitations of thought, however, which every 
thinker shares with all members of the race. These are limita- 
tions of human and finite thought. It does not need the elab- 
orate mechanism of the Kantian Critique to make us aware of 
this truth. Poets, and writers on physics as well as on theology, 



SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY 39 

have been from of old convicted of this confession. The spirit 
of wonder and the spirit of worship are both born of this weak- 
ness. As we have already seen, it is the avowed purpose of 
one of the most difficult and important branches of philosophy 
to ascertain the conditions, extent and guiding principles in 
practice, of all human cognition, — of thought and knowledge, 
as such. This the Kantian Critique attempted to do, but 
failed, of course, in accomplishing perfectly. Of late it has 
been fashionable in certain quarters to denounce the so-called 
critical philosophy, and to sneer at those who still 
incline to cultivate epistemology, or to take an interest in a 
theory of knowledge. But without this critical knowledge of 
the essential nature and limitations of human thought, no 
would-be philosopher can either comprehend just where he is 
himself standing or fitly bring before others his special, pet 
theory of the nature and meaning of the Universe. Moreover, 
one's conclusions on this problem of philosophy determine one^s 
entire view of what philosophy is, and of what philosophy can 
do. A relatively well-thought-out system of opinions, that hang 
together, and serve as well as any individual mind can, to 
interpret man's experience with nature and with himself, — this 
is all that any school of philosophy can claim to furnish. 

Besides these temperamental and cultural tendencies to 
prejudice which one may largely escape, and besides the limita- 
tions of human thought from which, under existing conditions, 
no escape seems possible, there are those restrictions upon the 
completeness and thoroughness of any man's thinking which 
belong to his physical, intellectual, and social environment. 
Among the latter, we may enumerate native capacity, oppor- 
tunity for gathering material and reflecting upon it, induce- 
ments other than those furnished by the inward impulse to 
philosophize, and any special bent of interest toward some one 
class of the several problems which are proposed for systematic 
philosophy. 

Finally, in the most recent times, the same tendency to spe- 



40 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

cialization has manifested itself in philosophy as in the par- 
ticular sciences. Each one of these sciences is developing its own 
characteristic philosophy. Physics is trying to account for the 
Being of the World in terms of the quantitative measurement 
and geometrical arrangement of electrons, strains, etc., in the 
one all-pervasive Ether. The biological sciences are striving 
to solve their more difficult problems by a theory of Evolution 
which is either pretty strictly expressed in terms of chemico- 
electrical mechanism, or else yields to the necessity for giving 
more room to psychological explanations under terms that 
assume a certain kind of soul-life for plants as well as animals. 
And, indeed, by both the physical and the biological sciences, 
atoms, electrons, and living cells, are virtually now endowed 
with sensitive souls; while the historical and social sciences 
seem to be returning from the extremes of a purely mechanical 
philosophy to a philosophy which takes more account of con- 
siderations derived from the sciences of psychology and ethics. 
The student of philosophy in these days must, therefore, 
quickly become aware of the limitations which are put upon 
the success of his peculiar task by the diversity of philosophical 
opinions urged upon him, with an imposing array of confirm- 
atory facts and impressive arguments, by the experts in the 
particular sciences. And if these experts are not agreed — as, 
indeed, they are not — over the philosophical foundations and 
the more important principles of their own sciences, how shall 
he reach a satisfactory conclusion as a professional expert in 
the so-called " science of sciences " ? That such an one feels 
with peculiar keenness the limitations of his own mind which 
are due to the fact that he continues human, while the prob- 
lems, both scientific and philosophical, which come before the 
race are hourly growing more complex and seemingly insolv- 
able, is a sign of philosophic calmness, modesty, and good- 
sense. But the almost inevitable result of the attempt to match 
his human weakness of intellect, and human limitations of 
capacity and opportunity, against the ^ever-expanding and 



SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY 41 

indeed infinite task of modern systematic philosophy, is the 

espousal of certain one-sided and partial views. The thinker is 
thus tempted to join some " school." In this way his seeming 
influence will, at least for a time, be considerably increased. 
The advocates of his school among the particular sciences, or 
the antagonists of opponent views among theologians and re- 
ligionists, will the more readily wri;:n:e and commend him. 
By the character of one's own temperament and education, and 
by the pressure of thoughts kindred t: those now enticing one 
under premise of a hastily completed symmetry to one's 
mpte :: philosophizing, it is dimcult to avoid being infill- 
ed profoundly. It is easier to u take up with " the thoughts 
that find one, rather than patiently to persist in the effort to 
find for one's self such thoughts as are true. As Fichte said: 
"The kind of philosophy which one chooses depends on the 
kind of man one is. For a philosophical system is not a dead 
bit of furniture which one can take to one's sei: or dispose of 
u :ne pleases ; but it is endowed with a soul by the soul of the 
man who has it." 

As an intellectual exercise, therefore, the tendency to that 
incompleteness and one-sidedness which results in schools of 
s:~:hy would seem necessarily to be upon the increase. 
There is no proof that the essential capacity of the human in- 
tellect has expanded, since man began to be known in recorded 
history. Judged by the tests of a genuine intellectual gTeat- 
ne ; s there are as :e— Aristotles and Platos to-day as there 
were more than two-thousand years ago among the Greeks. 
And two-thousand years earlier than they. Egyptians and Ori- 
entals appear to have shown as keen intuitive insights, and as 
logi :al reflective qualities of mind, toward the problems of 
morality and reiigirn a? are in exercise at the present time. 
Bat in : : :tk science and philosophy, while the limitations of the 
human intellect, the promptings :: the human heart, and the 
practical necessities :f the human will, have remained essen- 
tially unchanged, the iemands upon the stuaent :: s:ien:e :r 



42 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

philosophy have enormously increased. Both the main reasons, 
therefore, for that incompleteness of which the existence of 
schools of philosophy is a witness, have correspondingly in- 
creased. The result has been that all tendencies and schools, 
and all grades and shades of opinions within or between the 
various so-called schools, are flourishing to-day as never before 
in the history of philosophy. No wonder that the confused 
looker-on, who is curious to know what all the debate is about, 
thinks of the philosophy of the schools as having gone to pieces 
entirely. And yet there is more philosophy concealed under- 
neath, immanent within, and penetrating through the particu- 
lar sciences, and probably also more philosophizing on the part 
of the common people, than ever before in the history of the 
race. 

In spite of all this confusion, however, we may reduce the 
phenomena to some good degree of order by noticing how 
largely the differences are matters of emphasis; and by empha- 
sizing the agreements rather than the differences. 

And, first, it should be understood that several of the terms 
applied to distinguish the different schools of philosophy 
are not properly applied. Such are the terms, Dogmatism, 
Scepticism, Criticism ; and especially the terms Agnosticism and 
Eclecticism. The first three of these terms apply to the differ- 
ent methods of arriving at conclusions by the process of reflect- 
ive thinking rather than to those differences in the conclusions 
themselves which characterize the so-called schools of philos- 
ophy. A doctrine of method does, indeed, go far toward 
determining the results of philosophizing. And in this doc- 
trine there may be concealed a latent and unconscious tendency, 
or an expressed adherence, in favor of realism, idealism, or 
dualism. The very character of the mind of the thinker upon 
philosophical problems, whether it be dogmatic, sceptical, or 
critical, goes a certain way — and sometimes a long way — 
toward determining the class of opinions with which he will 
feel compelled to ally himself. But in the technical meaning 



SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY 43 

which philosophizing gives to these three terms, they apply 
to methods and not to results. As methods, the dogmatic, the 
sceptical, and the critical, must be used more or less by all 
thinkers, irrespective of the school or the age to which they 
belong. They stand for essential " moments," factors, or forms 
of functioning, by every human mind, no matter what the 
subject of its thought. And all philosophical reflection must 
make use of them all. For example, we call Immanuel Kant 
the founder of the modern critical school; and we have good 
reason to do this, if we understand correctly what is meant by 
our words. Kant's greater philosophical writings are all called 
by the term " Critique." They all applied the critical method, 
as their author understood it, to the intellect and logical facul- 
ties, to moral judgment and ideals, and to what Kant called 
" judgment " in the sesthetical realm (using the word " gesthet- 
ical" in a wide and loose significance). But Kant was also a 
sceptic, with a curious touch of uncriticized realism, in mat- 
ters of so-called science; a lofty idealist and man of faith, in 
matters of morals and religion; and he held to an unanalyzed 
mixture of realism and idealism with regard to the application 
of the teleological argument to the beauty of nature and to the 
existence of God. Not infrequently the most pronounced scep- 
tics with reference to the claims of the ideals of morals and 
religion are the most uncritical dogmatists in matters of scien- 
tific speculation; while no one else knows so much about the 
remotest and obscurest regions of things terrestrial as many of 
the most pronounced agnostics with reference to the plainest 
facts of the inward life. But the fuller expounding of these 
" moments " of human thought belongs to that chapter in a 
theory of cognition which will deal with dogmatism, scepticism 
and criticism, as all alike necessary to the acquisition, growth, 
and testing of every form of human knowledge. 

That agnosticism cannot be classed with idealism, realism, 
and dualism, as a co-ordinate school or system of philosophy, 
is still more evident. Agnosticism, in so far as it remains 



44 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

agnostic on good and reasonable grounds — that is, from lack of 
the right kind and amount of evidence — cannot be distin- 
guished from the critical or sceptical attitude of mind. Quite 
too often, however, as has already been suggested, it degener- 
ates into a kind of sullen or despairing dogmatism. Or if it 
takes up a positive position with regard to any of the greater 
problems of philosophy, it ceases so far forth to be agnostic 
and falls under the head of some one or other of the true 
schools. Eclecticism, as the very term signifies, unless guided 
by some principle of selection, in philosophy as in medicine and 
morals, results in a conglomerate of assumptions and opinions, 
that can by no means be reduced to the state of a consistent 
system. 

Therefore, all the terms to which reference has already been 
made, although they have often served the purposes of classifi- 
cation, really designate differences of method in attacking the 
problems of philosophy, or in the mental attitudes assumed 
toward one or more of these problems, rather than differences 
in " schools " properly so-called. Indeed, the opinions of all 
the schools, if intelligently arrived at and held, involve both 
scepticism ending in agnosticism, and also criticism leading 
to an affirmative or dogmatic conclusion. The same thing is 
not true, however, of those more or less carefully compacted 
systems which fall under the titles of Eealism, Idealism, and 
Dualism. In a different and more appropriate meaning of the 
word, these may be called the three principal schools of sys- 
tematic reflective thinking. Under changing forms and with 
differing degrees of mixture, they have existed during the en- 
tire history of philosophy. From the very nature of the case, 
they must continue to exist. And yet it can scarcely be insisted 
upon too much, that no one of them has ever been held, or can 
possibly ever be held, in perfect purity and separation from ele- 
ment's more properly belonging to the other schools. This the 
following brief exhibit of their characteristics and relations 
will make more clear. For its completer proof a thorough 



SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY 45 

study of the history of philosophical speculation is essential. 
The subsequent more detailed discussion of the problems of 
philosophy will also show how this classification into schools 
arises out of the very nature of philosophy itself. 

Bealism, in its most boorish and crude form, is the primitive 
philosophy. Without prolonged reflection or scientific criticism 
it takes the existence of " Things/' as they appear to so-called 
" common-sense/' to be ready-made. Its theory of knowledge 
is that these things, by some process of copying-off or making 
and receiving of impressions, are given to the mind in sub- 
stantially the same form as that in which they are ready-made. 
As to the reality of things, common-sense has no doubt. The 
uncriticized testimony of universal experience allows of no 
secpticism about so obvious a conclusion. But since the aim of 
reflective thinking, in even its earliest and crudest efforts, is 
to explain and to unify experience, some one kind of a " Thing- 
like " reality becomes the hypothesis of a beginning philosophy. 
And if the water of Thales, or the undifferentiated mass of 
matter proposed by Anaximander, proved quite insufficient to 
account for the complex and varied world of sensation, the 
atom of Lucretius, with its inherent tendencies and " hooks " 
for attachment to others of its fellows, seemed to promise a 
more satisfying principle for explaining the hidden nature 
of all that really is. When the physical and natural sciences, 
with their increasingly accurate and searching means of analy- 
sis, develop further, material things are found to need a far 
more elaborate explanation. For the essence of things is by no 
means so simple as it appears. On the contrary, when called 
by another name, the " constitution of matter " is found to be 
infinitely subtle and complex. Where modern chemistry, with 
all its marvellous advances, fails to explain by complicating the 
construction of atoms, and by endowing them with an ever 
larger equipment of qualities, modern physics comes to its aid. 
And now the most powerful imagination, in its loftiest flights, 
can scarcely suffice to picture the constitution and inner work- 



46 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ings of that mysterious Ether which the philosophical realism 
of to-day would establish in the seat of parent and producer of 
all material things. 

But realism, even in its most primitive form, cannot wholly 
evade the call of the sensuously invisible and of the ideal. 
Indeed, a certain form of idealism is older and more universal 
than any crudest form of philosophical realism can claim to be. 
This is the form of idealism which is called religion. Things 
visible and tangible seem satisfactorily to explain very little to 
the religious wants of the primitive man. He, therefore, looks 
for the satisfaction of these wants to invisible spiritual agencies 
which his imagination constructs after the pattern of his own 
self-conscious spirit — like himself — and yet, at least, in some 
respects, superior to this spirit'. Since these can determine his 
weal or woe, while the methods of their operation are concealed 
and even their presence and places of abode are hard to detect, 
he fears and propitiates them, or welcomes them with pleasure 
to the hearth and to the family or tribal feast. Thus the oldest 
and most widespread form of philosophy is the philosophy of 
religion. As the civilization and culture of mankind advances, 
and as the object of reflective thinking in the unifying and 
harmonizing of the different fields of human experience be- 
comes more obvious, a spiritual Ideal contests with the physical, 
for the claim to be the supreme reality. Since the roots of 
religion are quite as deep down and strongly interlaced in 
human nature as are the roots of the physico-chemical sciences, 
there is not the slightest reason to suspect that philosophy will 
ever relinquish its claim to afford an explanation of experience 
through the reasoned faith in a spiritual ideal. And as our 
further discussions will show, the most adequate form of 
modern scientific realism experiences more keenly than ever 
before the necessity of admitting into it's conception of the 
Being of the World the truths of a philosophical idealism. 

But to know visible things and explain the world of experi- 
ence as the product of their interaction, and at the same time 



SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY 47 

to believe in invisible spirits and to attribute largely to their 
action so many of our experiences in this same world, is to 
proclaim a sort of Dualism as the last word of philosophy. 
Things and spirits, or spirits in things, are two; and the end of 
reflective thinking is, if possible, to discover some essential 
union, if not an identity, of the two. Indeed, the very begin- 
nings of all experience are made in the experience of an unde- 
niable dualism. This is, at first, the dualism between things 
and myself; and, afterward, it is the dualism between a part 
at least of this thing-like body of mine and the real me. The 
crude thinking of primitive or uncultured man has no trouble 
with the hypothesis of a soul that is separable from the body. 
On the contrary, in order to explain all his experiences with 
himself, and with his environment of things and spirits, he 
seems to need two, or three, or even more, souls. Separated 
from th is body, however, he cannot conceive of them, or of their 
doings while separate, except in terms of other bodily qualities 
and shapes. And yet these are not precisely the same thing 
which he means to indicate by speaking of spirits or souls. 
Essentially the same dualism, however differently expressed, 
cannot be transcended by modern philosophy. It lies at the 
basis of all the particular sciences, both physical and psycho- 
logical. Especially is it controlling in that attempt to estab- 
lish concrete terms of relation between the two " moments " of 
body and spirit, which calls itself psycho-physics or physiolog- 
ical psychology. Such a science must assume some theory as to 
this relation. This is true whether the result takes the form of 
a theory of parallelism, or of interaction, or of a virtual mate- 
rialism, or of egoistic idealism. The two non-convertible classes 
of phenomena are there; their existence in experience cannot be 
denied. The moment the attempt is made to do away with the 
differences between them, the problem vanishes; and with it 
vanishes all hope of a science that shall establish relations be- 
tween the two. In the larger field of the final philosophy of 
the Being of the World, however, the difficulties of overcoming 



48 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

this persistent tendency to dualism take on another form. 
There the contest becomes for the most part a contest between 
a monistic Idealism and a materialistic Eealism. 

The inevitable and legitimate tendency of philosophical 
development is toward some form of Monism. Centuries be- 
fore our immediate ancestors had achieved any result worthy 
of the name of a system of philosophy, the gifted race which 
invaded Northern India had evolved all the principal thought's 
which characterize and help to classify all the different systems. 
These thoughts they expressed, indeed, in figurative and myth- 
ical form; and the chief interest of all the schools centered 
in the field of the philosophy of religion. But, making the 
proper allowances for this form, we can scarcely exaggerate 
the meed of admiration to which these speculative thinkers, 
considering the lack of all scientific development in their time, 
are justly entitled. All the schools, as we have said, were repre- 
sented in these early days of philosophy in India. But the 
prevalent and more truly characteristic school was a thorough- 
going idealism. This world of things which, to the early Greek 
and to the modern scientific mind seems so real, and which 
with its forces and material elements is so capable of explain- 
ing and interpreting all experience, to the Indian mind seemed 
a sphere of illusion, seemed Maya and no genuine reality. Only 
the One Ideal was truly real : all particular realities existed only 
as its ever-changing and rapidly fleeting ideas. To the inquirer 
after the true account of existence this Ideal One replies: 
" Earth, water, fire, air, space, mind, understanding, and self- 
consciousness — so is my nature divided into eight parts. But 
learn now my higher nature, for this is only my lower one. 
. . . I am the creator and the destroyer of all the world. 
Higher than I is nothing. On me the universe is woven like 
pearls upon a thread. . . . Know all things to be from Me 
alone, whether they have the quality of goodness, of passion, 
or of darkness. I am not in them; but they are in Me. . . . 
Hard to overcome is the divine illusion which envelopes me, 



SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY 49 

while it arises from these qualities. Only they pass through 
this illusion who come to Me alone. ... I am the inexhaust- 
ible seed. I am immortality and death. I am being and not 
being. ... I am glory, fortune, speech, memory, wisdom, 
constancy, and mercy ... I am the punishment of the 
punisher and the polity of them that would win victory! I 
am silence. I am knowledge. There is no end of my divine 
manifestations." 

This impassioned and mystical cry of an idealistic monism 
sounds to the modern Western ear like a demoniac call on 
reason to fling itself from the rock of reality into a bottomless 
abyss shrouded in impenetrable mist. And from it or from 
any invitation resembling it, modern scientific realism turns 
away to accept the embraces of an all-creating and all-explain- 
ing Ether, or some other quasi-material principle. In its ex- 
treme form, however, almost every word among those just 
quoted as descriptive of the ancient Indian Idealism might be 
put into the mouth of the apostle of the modern Western Keal- 
ism. "We say, "in its extreme form"; that is, when this 
realism assumes to have discovered in Matter, or in Ether, or 
in a Being of the World which somehow mysteriously combines 
the qualities of both, an adequate explanation and a " soul- 
satisfying" interpretation of the totality of human experience. 

" Wherever," says von Hartmann in his u Philosophy of the 
Unconscious" (ii, p. 234:), "we may look among the original 
philosophical or religious systems of the first rank, everywhere 
do we meet with the tendency to Monism: and it is only stars 
of the second or third magnitude which find satisfaction in an 
external dualism or still greater division." The same writer 
insists that, in all schools of philosophy of the modern epoch, 
we see " this tendency to Monism more or less perfectly realized 
in one fashion or another." These statements are substantially 
true as matters of historical fact. The reasons for the truth, 
especially in its application to the modern epoch, are chiefly 
these three: (1) The positive sciences are more and more both 



50 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

assuming and demonstrating the substantial unity of the Being 
of the World, as known to them all in terms of the various 
kinds of phenomena; (2) philosophy is more and more feeling 
the pressure of evidence from the divergent schools of specula- 
tion, in the form of a compulsion to unite in some Theory of 
Eeality that shall accredit and comprehend the fuller truth, 
which is only partially credited and imperfectly comprehended 
by each one of these divergent schools; (3) religion is seeking, 
and in the form of the increasingly dominant systems of 
theology, religion is finding, such a conception of its Object as 
shall harmonize the various moral and emotional impulses in 
which the religious experience has its sources and its guiding 
forces. In a word, science, philosophy and religion are striv- 
ing to unify all experience in One Ideal-Real. 

Dualism, as a claimant for the position of a rational and 
consistent system of reflective thinking, is, therefore, undoubt- 
edly being discredited by the progress of the age. 

But the considerations upon which all dualistic systems in 
the past have chiefly insisted, can no more safely be neglected 
by the modern epoch than by any other epoch or age in the 
history of human thought. Certain distinctions, which very 
readily take the form of oppositions and contradictions, still 
persist with undiminished energy. These distinctions lie at the 
base of human experience; they seem incorporate with the very 
structure of the universe itself. The universe is one, is in- 
deed a true wm-verse; but there are two times two princi- 
ples, and as many kinds of forces, which perpetually re-appear 
as contrasted in their intrinsic qualities and as contesting each 
other's fields of influence. Hence any monistic speculation, 
whether predominatingly idealistic or realistic, which treats 
slightingly, or annuls, these distinctions is destined to show 
rents and seams when viewed in the light of a full-orbed experi- 
ence. The cleavage cannot be concealed with untempered mor- 
tar; the cleavage is made more distressingly apparent by the 
very attempt at concealment. 

There are, indeed, two fundamental distinctions, on which 



SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY 51 

all human experience depends, that serve as the exciting causes 
of the perpetual recurrence of dualistic systems. They are 
the distinction between matter and mind, and the distinction 
between moral good and moral evil. It is the fear that, if 
these distinctions are made less effective or wholly abrogated, 
disastrous practical results will follow, which drives thinkers of 
a timid speculative character away from every form of monistic 
philosophy. On the other hand, those who have the fuller cour- 
age of confidence in human reason constantly adhere more 
closely to philosophical monism. Forms of monism, therefore, 
which do not accord its full value to the distinctions between 
the reality, me, and the reality that is not-me, cannot prevent 
the persistent recurrence of rival dualistic schemes. While to 
blur, diminish, or deny, the essential and eternally true distinc- 
tions of a moral sort, is to furnish an elixir of renewed life to 
an expiring dualism; it is even to equip it with an avenging 
sword. 

The task of Monism with reference to the claims of all con- 
tending dualistic systems is, therefore, not obscure, however 
difficult it may be of successful accomplishment. These claims 
must be admitted, and their full value assigned to the aspects, 
or classes, of human experience in which the claims are found. 
In the world of our daily experience, material bodies and their 
component elements, and spiritual agents as potent forces, must 
both be admitted to be real existences. The physical and the 
psychological sciences imply and involve both kinds of exist- 
ences. But monism must discover, and as far as possible reveal, 
some one Principle, some supreme Reality, which may serve 
to explain and interpret both kinds of existences, in their 
reciprocal reactions and forms of behavior. For if there be a 
Universe, it is certainly known to man only as built out of the 
two kinds of existences. The distinctions which separate the 
two in our daily experiences of both cannot, therefore, be held 
in such a way as to deny the oneness of the work in which the 
two co-operate. 

Undoubtedly, the most difficult and serious work which any 



52 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

monistic system has to achieve in the way of overcoming the 
inconsistencies of dualism, lies on ethical ground. Scientific 
dualism must, as we have seen, be accorded its full rights on 
its own grounds. These are the grounds of so-called " common- 
sense " and of the positive sciences. The same thing cannot 
be said, however, of dualism as an attempt at a final philoso- 
phy. Plainly, one world cannot be accounted for as the prod- 
uct, or the expression, or the evolution, of two independent and 
eternally existent principles. Yet more plain, and even shock- 
ingly plain, is the truth that the genesis and reality of moral 
evil cannot be accounted for, in such a way as to satisfy the 
demands of rational thought, by positing an eternal principle 
of evil on an equality with, and over against, a good God; or 
by denying in any way the constant dependence of all finite 
personality upon the Life of God. In this way does dualism 
introduce the germs of pain and trouble at the very beginnings 
of monistic philosophy, in both its realistic and its' idealistic 
forms of development. 

The result of mixing dualistic considerations with those 
which lead to realism or to idealism is to produce a further 
variety of intermediate schools. The students of the particular 
sciences are accustomed in these days to disclaim the title to 
authority, and even the pretence of interest, in subjects lying 
outside of their own chosen domain. The metaphysics of 
chemistry is for chemists; the metaphysics of physics is for 
physicists; the metaphysics of biology is for biologists, and so 
on. Especially emphatic is the disclaimer of knowledge and 
interest customarily made by the devotees of the physical 
sciences when speaking of the so-called sciences of psychology 
and ethics. But all the sciences which deal with material 
things are interdependently related; and since science itself 
is an achievement of the human mind, none of them can wholly 
disregard the discoveries and tenets of psychology. Certain 
ethical considerations also become important to them all, as 
soon as we regard scientific discovery and the formulation and 



SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY 53 

_:e :t srie::::::: truth. :.- ;. ~~:e::e = :t ;::::::, I: i::"7i= 
izir- ■:::'.!". :"-1t:. ::::.t "::::: ::::ts ::' ttcttstz have to teitrzite 
the claims of dualism. But, in general, realism and idealism 
recognize the dnalistic assumptions and experiences in different, 
or diametrically opposite, ways. Bealism inclines stronglj : 
espouse the cause of matter: idealism to espouse the cause of 
min(L Thus materialistic Monism becomes the principal school 
within the larger school of Eealists; idealistic, or spiritual 
Monism becomes almost, or quite, identical with the entire body 
•:: I'etlists. The timer ::i" ; t:~ art aetetrzhaasz: at: erz- 
_ morals; the latter '.elites for some, at least, modi- 
fied theory ct* free-will, and for a certain personality independ- 
ert :: the material :rramsm. 7t.;- t:-: ;'::;: state's it" thilis- 
cttT se-e t. ~ ~ hiih aim :: ±1: the erthiatatiit: ;ae:~ httet- 
pretation of all experience, in some one Principle (or at most 
t~? trit_iimes . "leiime stih further hirereitiea c" mam' 
- : ■■■;- i:r_ hem 7 meaii-.tiatr shmiis. 
7 or, in truth, the extremes of both Bealism and Idealism 
serve to correct each other; and Dualism, while it constantly 
- its rirhr arm its t:~er to imemere ami :he:h a r:o 
hasty and inconsiderate synthesis, must uniformly succumb, 
when it attempts to raise itself to the position of a rational and 
consistent system. The perpetually recurring, but never fin- 
ished task of philosophy, as it is attempted and only partially 
at.:: term irarim ar imtiishea m :t - tmrhe: at :r its t: ::lem= ; 
tmas ' rrmu- rear. It is t: aisiamr ara emrara sam 2 
mcmstii sjstem as shall " : :th satism the ramas :: a s:ier:ir: 
dualism, and also interpret the world of experience in a man- 
ner to establish the reality of rational ideals. Our human 
thinking must keep itself face to face with the realities of ex- 
perience, from its first beginning all the way toward the goal 
which it will never reach. Its desire is. by humble, docile, in- 
mstriras. ~e: :: --: it: :::t". : :'. mmim t: mm — Eealitr itt the 
large, to understand what the Being : the World really is. 
It mas: tri:. them mr me m:mer: lease t: — el a: rate raits. :t 



54 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

fail to learn the valid conclusions of the particular and positive 
sciences. Philosophy must be, and must remain, realistic to 
the core. But reflective thinking soon discovers that human 
ideals in science, conduct, art, and religion, are psychological 
and spiritual facts and forces — facts most indubitable, forces 
most potent and resistless in human history throughout. These 
rational, assthetical, and moral ideals, reflective thinking sees to 
be more or less clearly suggested, more or less perfectly realized, 
in the evolution of external nature and in the development of 
the race. Ideals, too, have a valid claim to reality. In all 
concrete realities their presence, as a witness to immanent 
reason, speaks to the reason of inquiring man. Therefore, phi- 
losophy cannot fail to be idealistic; and Idealism in some one 
of its many forms has always been the "school" (?) which 
has commanded the adherence of the choicest spirits, as well as 
the most thoughtful minds. 

For these reasons it is that schools of philosophy, in general, 
are the persistent forms in which the efforts at solving the prob- 
lems of philosophy arrange and display themselves. But the 
more philosophically complex is the thinking of any age or race, 
the greater the number of the carefully graded and qualified 
groups of opinions which will unite together, and separate 
from others, the adherents of these so-called schools. There 
will always be those, however, who have failed to think their 
way through the dividing lines and forbidding barriers of a 
common-sense or a scientific dualism to some form of monism. 
And there will always be those who have obliterated these lines 
and leaped over these barriers, in their determination to reach 
the goal of monistic philosophy by the shortest possible path. 
In any form of monism also, there must be either elaborated 
or concealed elements from both idealism and realism. For a 
purely realistic or a purely idealistic system of philosophy 
cannot be maintained. Any position approaching more or less 
nearly to that of complete and uncompromising realism, or the 
same kind of idealism, is tenable only as a momentary point of 



SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY 55 

standing. For the goal after which the human mind is reach- 
ing is such an elaborated and reasoned conception of the Being 
of the World, as shall comprise all concrete realities and, at 
the same time, satisfy man's highest ideals. 

That this goal has never been reached by either science or 
philosophy is confessedly true. That it never will be reached 
by either science or philosophy is, doubtless, equally true. But 
the spur of desire to go forward toward it is not less effective 
because of the distant and unattainable character 'of the goal. 
Movement, development, is the very life and satisfying reward 
of the student of philosophy, as it is of the student of the par- 
ticular sciences. 

Certain practical truths which have to do with our aims and 
method in the study of philosophy may be derived from this 
survey of the nature and meaning of so-called schools in 
philosophy. And, first: Neither history nor modern learning 
can instruct anyone as to what ready-made system of philosophy 
he should adopt. Much less can one safely follow the exhorta- 
tion to " take up with " the system that " finds us " — mean- 
ing by this the system which most strikes one's fancy or seems 
best to suit one's temperament or passing mood. For those in- 
clined to suicide, Schopenhauer or Xietzsche may indeed seem 
to speak most true. To men who do not care to think, Prag- 
matism may appear the least expensive, through-express route 
to the terminal station, whose station-master is the realized hope 
of the ages. While the poet will continue to revel well content 
in the dreams of Plato or of some mystic of the Middle Ages. 
The student of philosophy, however, should be eager to be 
taught, but not easily fooled. The distrust which he has of 
his own temperament will to some extent measure the caution 
with which he will adopt any one ready-made system of 
philosophy. 

And, second, the student of philosophy will recognize the full 
significance of the conviction that the schools of thinking, which 
result from diversities of method, and those other schools which 



56 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

emphasize differences of result, must all, without exception, 
have a large measure of facts and truths to testify in their 
behalf. Dogmatism, scepticism, criticism, agnosticism — these 
are all, on various occasions and toward various assertions 
and doctrines, whether in science or philosophy, proper atti- 
tudes of the reflective mind. Dualism and monism, whether in 
the form of realism or idealism, stand for experiences which in 
themselves considered cannot be gainsaid; and which, in re- 
spect of many of the conclusions derived from them, cannot 
be successfully disputed or safely disregarded. There is a 
" soul of truth " in them all, and so far as we can see, it is 
an ubiquitous and immortal soul. But the recognition of this 
truth should not send us to a vender of half-baked dough or 
of stale crusts for our bread. The facts do not necessitate a 
hotch-potch of pickings from many different authors of philo- 
sophical works. By thoughtful study of the masters and of the 
truths themselves, we may find our own way — if not to a com- 
pleted system of philosophy, at least to many a reasoned philo- 
sophical opinion affecting profoundly and favorably our atti- 
tude toward nature, toward God, and toward humanity. Eor 
philosophy, like science, if it cannot solve all its own problems, 
can in some respects tell us how to live more worthily of the 
rational powers with which we are equipped. There are certain 
" riddles by which our minds are oppressed in life, and about 
which we are forcibly compelled to some view or other in order 
to be able really to live at all." And as a modern writer has 
said : " We have to distinguish two kinds of philosophy ; the 
one manifests itself by the speech, and the other by the con- 
duct, of the man. . . . The latter it is — the realization of 
wisdom by the man in his social intercourse — which has re- 
cently been brought, as philosophy in deed, to more general 
recognition." 



CHAPTER IV 

PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL 

Philosophy aims at a certain kind and degree of knowledge. 
Its success is, therefore, most intimately connected with a cor- 
rect doctrine of knowledge. What is it to know, as respects the 
essential characteristics of the cognitive act, in distinction from 
conjecture, opinion, or as yet unverified theory or hypothesis? 
What are the guaranties of knowledge ; what its limits, if it has 
limits; and what are its underlying principles and presupposi- 
tions? All these questions either lie in the path which we 
must traverse in order to form an adequate and safe concep- 
tion of philosophy; or else they constitute prominent and essen- 
tial parts of philosophy itself ? The first in this series of ques- 
tions, is, however, the rather psychological and only preliminary 
to the study of philosophical problems. The others belong to 
that department of philosophy which has already been referred 
to as epistemology or the theory of knowledge. 

There has been much idle and rather fruitless debate as to 
which of the two — metaphysics or the criticism of man's know- 
ing faculty — ought to come first in systematic philosophy. 
Kant and his disciples have argued that the critique of reason 
must precede metaphysics as a theory of reality; Hegel and his 
disciples have rejected all such claims of criticism to prece- 
dence. Thus with the former, criticism ending in scepticism 
is accustomed wholly to displace a systematic ontology; with 
the latter, logic as the doctrine of the self-evolution of reason, 
is assumed to be identical with metaphysics as the theory of 
reality. Siding with the one, we ask ourselves: How can I 
reason with confidence about the ultimate Eeality, unless I 

67 



58 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

have previously determined by a process of criticism, the capac- 
ity and limits of human reason? How can I say what the 
Being of the World, extra-mentally or really considered, is ; un- 
less I first know that somehow the cognitive faculty has appli- 
cation beyond the sphere of its own phenomena? On inclining 
to the other side, however, I ponder well such inquiries as the 
following: How shall I criticize reason without trust in the 
powers of the very reason I am criticizing ? Surely I may assume 
that, without trust in itself, reason can neither make legitimate 
use of its own capacity, nor even know when it is transcending 
this legitimate use. There is no other critic of reason than 
reason itself. Self-criticism implies self-confidence. Or to 
employ a well-worn figure of speech : How shall I, being a man 
and not a fish, venture into the water without first knowing 
that I can develop the capacity to swim? But how shall I 
surely know that I can learn to swim, unless I first venture 
into the water? 

A historical survey of the treatment given to the problems 
of epistemology and of metaphysics proper shows that they 
have always been considered and solved in a kind of mutual 
interdependence. The treatment, however brief and unsatis- 
factory on any writer's part, of either of these branches of phi- 
losophy shows that this interdependence is essential to the 
nature of both. It does not much matter, then, which of the 
two is treated before the other; if only in the treatment of each, 
the bearings of the intimate relations to certain problems of the 
other are kept in mind. One's metaphysics, or rather one's 
entire attitude toward any theory of reality, will be determined 
largely by one's theory of knowledge ; one's theory of knowledge 
will always be compelled to pay respect to one's metaphysics. 
Which shall first receive technical treatment in any attempt at 
systematic philosophy is perhaps a matter of convenience. 

The failure to give full credit to the psychology of knowl- 
edge has been a primitive cause of failure in many otherwise 
notable schemes of epistemology. Eminently true is this state- 



PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE 59 

ment of the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, the founder 
of the modern critical school, the man of strong faith and 
loftv ideals in morals and religion, in whose name and bv force 
of whose genius, however, the modern movement toward an 
ethical and religious agnosticism has largely prevailed. In 
all his critiques, and especially in his marvellous "' Kiitik of 
the Pure Reason/ 9 Kant strives in the interests of moral and 
religious truth to reconcile the rival claims of the extremes of 
dogmatism and criticism. The effort was most commendable; 
and the result of the keen and profound work of analysis which 
this great thinker performed, and of the new view of the most 
intricate problems of philosophy which the analysis introduced, 
was epoch-making in the history of human thought. Beyond 
all his predecessors Kant conceived of the problem of knowl- 
edge in a clear and comprehensive way; employed the critical 
method in its solution with an unparalleled thoroughness: and 
kept to the end a tender regard for the effect of his answer to 
the problem upon the moral and religious faiths of mankind. 
What, then, was the cause of the principal defects in Kant's 
theory of knowledge ; and what has been the cause of similar 
defects in the modifications introduced by his disciples since 
his time ? It has been with them, as it was with their master, 
a lack of clear insight into the matter-of-fact nature and the 
actual development of cognitive faculty in the individual and 
in the race. In a word, it has been disregard, almost amount- 
ing to contempt, for the psychological point of view. It was 
virtually assumed by their leader that we know the world by 
thinking according to the terms of pure logic; or — more tech- 
nically said — that intellect alone constructs the world of real- 
ity, for both Things and Minds, according to the so-called 
a categories,"'* or constitutional forms of its own functioning. 
Kant did, indeed, hold as vital to his theory of mediation, that 
sense and intellect, intuition and concept, are both necessary 
to knowledge. His celebrated saying ran as follows : " With- 
out intuition concepts are empty, without conception sense is 



60 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

blind." But all that intuition contributed was finally reduced 
to the mere, blind impression that somewhat extra-mentally 
real exists; and even this impression is treated as though it 
were of doubtful validity in many passages of the critical 
philosophy. Thus knowledge is separated by an unbridged 
gulf from reality, and is reduced to the methodical arrange- 
ment of so-called phenomena. Even knowledge of the Self 
is confined to the phenomenal Ego; my true and real Self 
is as much hidden to my own cognition as is the reality of the 
external world. Intellect manipulates the phenomena so as 
to give them objectivity, or the appearance of reality; but the 
only reality known to man is, after all, the reality of being 
objective, an object of the intellect, a phenomenal reality. In 
the large, then, we have to say, that all the particular sciences, 
both physical and psychological, are only the intellect's way of 
connecting together phenomena; and whether they truly repro- 
duce, or faithfully represent, the Being of the World, as It is, 
and the processes of nature as they are, we can never say. 
Thus criticism ends in scepticism so far as science is concerned. 
God, freedom, and immortality, must be rediscovered and re- 
habilitated, as it were, by an analysis of reason's fundamental 
beliefs, — the conceptions guaranteed by a rational faith. The 
inconsistencies involved, as between the truths affirmed and the 
truths denied, need not occupy us further at the present time. 
The lesson to be learned from the result of criticism in its 
application to a theory of knowledge is the necessity of study- 
ing cognition more carefully as a full-orbed and vital activity 
of the human soul. We use the old-fashioned word " soul " 
because we mean something much more than can be easily 
comprehended under the words mind, or intellect. Instead 
of knowledge being the result of a logical arrangement of 
phenomena that are due to a cause, we know not of what char- 
acter; knowledge, the rather, comes through the feeling-full 
commerce of an intelligent, self-conscious will, which finds it- 
self in relations of action and reaction with other purposeful 



PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE 61 

wills. This is the fact of experience, although we can only par- 
tially explain it as fact. This is the truth with regard to the 
development of experience, although we can never wholly clear 
up the mystery of such a development. But all origins and 
forms of growth defy science to give them a complete and final 
explanation; and not least of all, the origin and growth of 
knowledge in the individual and in the race. 

An analysis of any act of knowledge shows that the whole 
soul, — to accept the customary three-fold division of so-called 
faculties — intellect, feeling, will, is involved in every such act. 
To say the same thing in another way: The knower is an in- 
telligent, self-conscious agent, knowing himself as doing some- 
thing, and his object as doing something to him. Lest this 
division of the soul into so-called faculties should seem to 
impair its unity, and to cause the act and object of knowledge 
to fall to pieces or disintegrate, we may try various ways of 
expressing what every act of knowledge implies as to the 
knower. In knowledge, the knower appears to himself as an 
active and sensitive intellect. The knower feels sure of the 
existence of himself and of his object, the thing known; he is 
certain of his painful or pleasurable feelings, and of those 
feelings we call sensations, which are in him but which he 
nevertheless attributes to the object as their external cause. 
The knower is above all an intelligent will. He knows his 
object, the thing known, as he acts upon it, moves it, moulds 
it, makes or destroys or modifies it; and is himself moved, 
moulded, or otherwise affected by it. Without intellect there 
is no knowledge; without feeling there is no knowledge; with- 
out doing, and experiencing the effects upon ourselves and our 
object, of this doing, there is no knowledge. And yet, these 
elements, or factors, are all given together in the unity of 
the act or process of cognition. 

Still bearing in mind that we must not allow our analysis 
even to seem to separate in experience what is really united 
in every act or process of knowledge, let us consider the truths 



62 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

stated in the foregoing sentences, somewhat more in detail. 
And we will begin with a brief consideration of the relation 
of thinking to knowing. 

That little, if any, advance in knowledge can be gained with- 
out more or less of logically correct and prolonged thinking 
is a practical maxim which no one familiar with the successes 
of modern science, or the requirements of modern education, 
would be inclined to dispute. And, in truth, without some 
thinking no knowledge whatever can be gained. For all 
knowledge implies judgment; what we know, or think we 
know, we judge to be true. Indeed, knowledge can only ex- 
press itself in terms of affirmative or negative judgment, in 
terms of Yes or No. On the other hand, that there is much 
knowledge which cannot be gained by mere thinking is a 
maxim scarcely more to be held in doubt. And most of what 
children know — or the adults who for the most part belong to 
the unscientific and uncritical minds — is acquired with very 
little thought on their part. They learn how to manage their 
own bodies, and so indirectly what the qualities of these bodies 
are, chiefly by an unthinking imitation. They are told the 
names of things, and know them by believing what they are 
told. Even the elements of scientific knowledge, such as the 
race has acquired by many centuries of experiment and think- 
ing, they know chiefly by remembering what they have been 
taught. But above all else, in order to get a true conception 
of the origin and nature of human knowledge, must it be borne 
in mind that the human being learns really to know things 
only as he has dealings with them by actual commerce of 
energy, that causes or resists the impulse to motion. His toys, 
his tools, the furniture of the room, the objects in the outside 
air, the reality of his own playmates or rivals in the test of 
strength, the boy learns to know by a life full of motion, due to 
impulse and accompanied and followed by pleasure-pain sensa- 
tions, rather than by processes of a correctly logical character. 
And yet, if he is a heedless, unintelligent, or thoughtless boy, 



PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE 63 

he does not really or successfully learn to know. Thinking is, 
then, a factor indispensable in knowledge; but it is by no 
means the whole of knowledge. 

If now we try to describe the essential nature of thought, 
as thinking becomes an essential element or factor in all 
knowledge, we are first of all compelled to notice this fact: 
To think is to relate. All thinking is a relating activity. 
To say that all things and minds are known only as related to 
other things and minds is a truth as universal as it is barren 
of concrete scientific results. That things and minds are neces- 
sarily known as standing in relations follows from this char- 
acteristic of knowledge, that the thinking which enters into 
all knowledge is a relating activity. To carry the description 
of the essential nature of thinking further back into the origin 
of mental life, we may say that the first exhibition of intellect 
which we can detect in the human infant is that it begins 
to made discriminations. " Discriminating consciousness" is 
the primary phase of the so-called faculty of thought. In 
more familiar language, the child commences to give atten- 
tion to, and to notice, differences and resemblances. Which 
of these two forms of discrimination, differencing or assimilat- 
ing, comes before the other, or whether they are not neces- 
sarily and invariably joined together, is a matter of no im- 
portance at the present time. But the result of the two, which 
are different sides of one primal activity of discrimination, is 
to establish more or less firmly fixed relations within the field 
of experience; or rather, it is to establish experience as dis- 
tinguished from a mere series or jumble of unrelated sensa- 
tions. 

This primary form of the relating activity of intellect, these 
earliest and most unintellectual acts of discriminating con- 
sciousness, do not constitute knowledge until they terminate 
in more or less definite forms of judgment. Without the ex- 
ercise of judgment there is no knowledge. To know is to 
judge; and the activity in judgment, in order to contribute to 



64 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

knowledge, must be purposeful. The earliest judgments, how- 
ever, are in the form which is sometimes, and not inappro- 
priately, called the "psychological judgment," in order to dis- 
tinguish it from the more definitely logical judgment with 
its more clearly self-conscious and experience-full recognition 
of the resemblances and differences which belong to classes of 
objects. Yet in all judgment, however concrete and immature, 
there is recognition of qualities and modes of behavior com- 
mon to several objects. This affirmative or negative recogni- 
tion of the particular thing, as coming up, or failing to come 
up, to a certain standard of likeness, is essential to every, 
even the lowest form of knowledge. 

It must also be noticed that the activity of judging is a 
kind of synthesis. It is a putting together of otherwise di- 
verse elements of experience. In saying this, it is not meant, 
of course, that these so-called " elements of experience " have 
a separate, concrete, real existence, and can therefore be united 
by some agent standing outside of and above them, as chemical 
elements may be synthesized in a chemical laboratory. But 
the judgment recognizes that certain qualities, or modes of 
behavior, which may exist separately from each other, are actu- 
ally united in some particular one Thing. The one book is red, 
and heavy, and shaped so, etc.; it is somehow a synthesis of 
several qualities like those belonging to other books, to the 
toys, to some stones and pieces of wood. Judgment is reached, 
when the intellect in the exercise of its discriminating activity, 
in the form of recognition, accomplishes a corresponding syn- 
thesis. In all the earlier acts of cognition there is an unre- 
flective leap to judgment, rather than the arriving at judgment 
by a deliberate and purposeful logic. The same thing is true 
of the vast majority of the so-called practical judgments of 
the adult mind. But such is the essential nature of all judg- 
ment, and such the part which the activity of judgment takes 
in every act of cognition, that we may lay down the following 
principle: Knowledge is born of thinking which has arrived 



PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE 65 

at the pausing place of a judgment — a finished product of 
synthetic activity. 

It is not necessary for our purpose to describe the develop- 
ment of thinking as it results in the formation of so-called 
abstract conceptions, of logical judgments,, of the discovery 
and statement of laws, or principles, whether as applied to 
things or to minds, and of scientific system. As real proc- 
esses gone through in consciousness, as actual performances 
of the knower, they all no more resemble the formulas of 
logic, whether expressed in words, or mathematical terms, or 
other symbols, than the actual concrete things of nature re- 
semble the most schematic representations of the scientific text- 
book or the drawings of the lecturer upon the blackboard. In 
reality, no thing, no process, no transaction between things, 
answers precisely to any conception, logical judgment, or 
statement of a law. In reality there is infinite diversity, and 
ceaseless change. This is true whether we speak of the real- 
ities which we know in external nature, or the realities of which 
we become aware through the consciousness of self. Yet with- 
out this kind of thought, which calls itself abstract, there could 
be none of that kind of knowledge which calls itself science. 
The faculty of abstraction and generalization is, then, essential 
to science. Its faiths, and guiding principles, and necessary 
presuppositions, must be subjected to critical examination in 
other connections. 

That thinking alone can never result in knowing, and that 
thought is not the whole of knowledge, has been implied in 
much which has already been said about the activity of know- 
ing, and the nature of thought. The very word u activity/' 
and the terms *' ; discriminating consciousness."' " judging fac- 
ulty/ 3 etc., imply the presence of will in all knowledge. We do 
not, indeed, approve of this word " Will " to express, as it were, 
a separate faculty, or class of faculties, of the human soul. 
The rather, in psychology as in ethics would we call attention 
to the patent truth that the very essence of the soul, so to say, 



66 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

is to be a will; that for man, to be is to be an intelligent 
agent. By affirming that will is present in all knowledge, 
therefore, it is intended to teach the truth that all the processes 
which result in knowledge are active processes. Never is the 
knower merely the passive recipient of impressions. Always, 
on the contrary, is the knower an active agent, a producer 
of his own knowledge. 

This active aspect of all knowledge reveals itself chiefly in 
two ways. The first of these is purposeful, selective attention. 
In the beginnings of knowledge the direction and fixation of 
attention are largely forced; they are determined by the char- 
acter of the object with respect to the intensity of the sensa- 
tions which it awakens, and the character, and strength of 
interest its presence awakens in the observing mind. But with- 
out a certain degree of voluntary and selective attention, as 
we have reason to believe, no knowledge, even of the most pri- 
mary sort, can be gained through sensory impressions. The 
whole doctrine of attention, as it is elaborated for purposes of 
success in education and in scientific discovery, emphasizes the 
part which voluntary and selective attention plays in the ac- 
quisition and development of knowledge. A different set of 
words for each sense makes emphatic for the popular mind a 
distinction which involves the same important truth. Look 
intently and carefully observe, if you would know by seeing; 
listen and note well, if you would learn by hearing; touch 
and handle attentively, if you would discover the tactual and 
muscular qualities of things. In gaining knowledge by experi- 
ment, whether in the study, shop, or laboratory, or on the 
street and in the field, you must give attention; you must se- 
lect the materials and conditions and control of your experi- 
mentation, if you would have it result in additions to ^our 
knowledge. 

Quite as obvious in respect of its importance for the growth 
of knowledge is another example of its dependence upon the 
will of the knower. So conclusively has modern psychology 



PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE 67 

demonstrated the part of the motor system in its relation to 
all our sensory impressions, that the very word impressions 
can no longer be applied to experiences with its old signifi- 
cance. Sensations never arise as impressions without an ac- 
companiment of motor activity, or of the revived images of 
previous motor activities. Seeing is never merely the receiving 
of visual impressions. Hearing, the apparently most passive 
of our senses, is never merely the receiving of auditory impres- 
sions. Active touch, with contracting and relaxing muscles, 
moving limbs, and a constant readjustment of the organs to 
one another and to outside objects, are indispensable to all 
growths of knowledge, both of ourselves and of things. And 
just as there is no ordinary and so-called practical knowledge 
without activity, under control by the motor organism of the 
knower, so there is no physico-chemical or biological or other 
form of science, without the same kind of activity. In manipu- 
lating things, we know that they really are, and what they 
are. In moving our own bodies we know that we are and that 
we are not the things which we know to be no t-our selves, 
chiefly through the differences in their relations toward our 
power to produce motor changes in them. Even the pure sci- 
ence of mathematics could not come into existence, since its 
essence consists in the act of counting, unless we were ourselves 
capable of control over a motor organism. And all the applied 
mathematics, the numbering and measuring of natural forces, 
depends upon this same form of purposeful activity in the 
knower. Only beings that have wills of their own can know. 
And the beings which these will-full beings know as other than 
themselves, are known only as they are recognized in terms of 
opposing wills. 

We shall see, subsequently, that it is this experience with 
ourselves as active agents, as wills, producing effects in other 
and different active agents, or opposing wills, on which all 
man's knowledge of the real world depends. Indeed, without 
just such an experience, no real and substantial world could 



68 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

be known; for no real knower, and no real world to be known, 
could exist. To be real is to be active, to do something, to 
produce and to experience change. Dead and inactive sub- 
stances are not substances, are not realities at all. But above 
all is it true that such purely hypothetical and dead entities, 
mythical beings, if existent, could not be knowers. For knowl- 
edge implies voluntary activity in the direction and fixation 
of attention, and in the control of a motor organism that can 
be made to assume a variety of relations toward other selves 
and toward things. 

The principal deficiencies of that sceptical theory of knowl- 
edge which resulted from the Kantian criticism are due to a 
failure to recognize the important part played by the feelings 
in every act of cognition. Intellect, in Kant's restricted use 
of the word, if left to itself, would be as blind as feeling alone 
is blind. Pure activities of reason could only give a world as 
unreal and illusory as that Maya which is regarded as a fleet- 
ing show of sensory impressions separated from the immanent 
reason and will which is truly manifested in them all. 

The manifold ways in which feeling, not only influences 
knowledge, but also enters into the very constitution of every 
act of cognition, are difficult to analyze; they can be described 
only in terms which make an appeal to the immediate experi- 
ences in which the feelings consist. For, strictly speaking, 
no form of feeling can be defined ; nor can knowledge be gained 
by mere description as to what it actually is. The essence of 
feeling is in its being felt. This is conspicuously true of that 
knowledge of ourselves which comes only through experiences 
of feeling. What is it to be a human soul ? Surely, this ques- 
tion can never be fully answered by describing the processes 
of reason, or by analyzing and criticizing the categories, after 
the fashion of the Kantian critique or of the Hegelian logic. 
To be a soul is to love, to hate, to aspire, to long for, to 
grieve for, to suffer the various complex forms of appetite, 
passion and sentiment, which have most to do with individual- 



PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE 69 

izing the human race, and with determining the social relations 
and achievements of each individual in the race. What is true 
in the most absolute manner of these fundamental forms of 
feeling is relatively true of the various shadings and secondary 
varieties of the same feelings as they are differenced by the 
different social relations. Thus the feelings of the parent, 
of the lover, of the friend, must be experienced in order to 
know what it is really to be parent, lover, or friend. To re- 
gard these experiences as merely phenomenal of an unknown 
substance, the existence and qualities of which must be estab- 
lished by argument, and sustained by philosophical criticism, 
is to juggle with experience. In having such experiences the 
soul is real; in that intuitive recognition of them, which self- 
consciousness not only implies but in which self-consciousness 
consists, the soul knows that it is, and what it is. 

Among these feelings — or shall we not rather say, as a 
" tone " characterizing them all — are our various degrees and 
kinds of pleasures and of pains. It was a favorite contention 
of the philosopher Lotze that self-conscious personality was 
impossible without the experience of pleasure and pain. How- 
ever this may be as a matter of abstract reasoning with regard 
to the possible and the impossible, there can be no considerable 
doubt about the matter of fact. It is as beings experiencing 
pleasure and pain by adjusting ourselves to changing relations 
with other beings that we come to know what we are ourselves, 
and what manner of world constitutes our environment. The 
pleasure and the pain are peculiarly ours; they cannot be 
attributed to other subjects than ourselves. We may modify 
them by changing the point of regard, by varying the object 
on which attention is concentrated. We may avoid or remove 
them by changing our relations to their causes. But so often 
as they recur, and as long as they persist, the pleasure and 
the pain are known as really and undoubtedly our very own. I 
am therefore known to myself as a being capable of enjoying 
pleasure and of suffering pain. Indirectly also, through these 



70 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

experiences of pleasure-pain, we greatly increase our knowl- 
edge of the world of things. The child and the savage attribute 
to things the capacity for pleasure-pain as confidently and 
promptly as the capacity for purposeful activity. The same 
conception of a reality which is by its very nature full of feel- 
ing, is as firmly held by poetry and pictorial art to-day as it 
was ever held in the most primitive times. Keligion, from 
the earliest records of its views down to the most recent the- 
ology, believes in the "whole creation groaning and travailing 
together " ; it also believes in a suffering God. As to the sci- 
entific validity of this conception of things not-ourselves being 
subjects of pleasure and pain, in the case of those animals 
which are organically complex, we do not doubt. Only as we 
know them by interpreting their motions as signs of feelings 
similar to our own, do we know them as they really are. They 
have appetites, passions, desires, and even some measure of 
the higher intellectual feelings, such as curiosity, interest, etc. 
Indeed, the only conception which we can frame of actual 
experiences in either man or animal, corresponding to the 
vague and indeterminate word, "instinct," is given in terms 
of feeling rather than of ideation or thought. 

Most prominent of all the experiences on which we base 
our knowledge that we are, and what we are, and our knowl- 
edge of things, that they are, and what they are, is the so- 
called " feeling of effort." From the physiological point of 
view, this feeling! is correlated with nervous processes both 
centrally and peripherally initiated. The substance of the 
brain, from the very beginning of the life of the brain, is al- 
ways active; the substance of the brain, from the very begin- 
ning of the life of sensation, is always being stirred to activity 
by sensory impulses from parts of the body external to itself. 
In our complex experience, we know that we are real, and that 
things are real, because we know that we are striving, and that 
our striving is opposed. This knowledge, in both its aspects, 
is dependent upon an analysis of the complex feeling of effort. 



PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE 71 

By willing changes in things, and in our relations to them 
or in their relations to one another, and by having to work in 
order to effect these changes, we know both ourselves and 
them. On the side of will, or voluntary activity, this factor 
of knowledge has already been referred to. But our activity 
is never in its results a pure and unopposed activity. Our 
will meets in things a somewhat that wills not as we will. 
The emotional element in the transaction is the feeling of 
effort. The inference is a leap of the intellect to an external 
cause. Thus it is that knowledge of all realities combines feeling 
and intellect. 

The entire theory of localization, both of the different parts 
of the bodily organism and of external things in spatial rela- 
tions to this organism, is based upon the fact that active " dis- 
criminating consciousness " takes account of an infinite variety 
in the grades and shades of the experience of feeling. Neither 
the plain man nor the man of science gets his first information 
as to where things are, and as to what is their size, their 
shape and relation to other things, by processes of reason- 
ing about them. He looks, or listens, or feels, to discover 
where they really are. So integral and inseparable a part of 
the complex transaction called knowledge of location, is the 
emotional element that we express it all even more truly in 
terms of feeling than in terms of intellect. The child feels 
the difference between right arm and left, between leg and 
either arm; between breast and back, and toe and finger, etc. 
In cases where the knowledge is not gained by sight we natu- 
rally express the action in terms of feeling. But psychology 
gives us to know that the delicate shades of feeling which ac- 
company and control the positions and movements of the two 
eyes are an indispensable part of localization by vision. In 
all the grosser operations of obtaining the direction, size, shape, 
and relations in space of large or distant objects, motions of 
the eyes, over different arcs, and even of the head and trunk, 
with their accompanying changes in localization feelings, are 



72 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

an indispensable factor in the whole transaction. The more 
refined measurements of science, which are customarily made 
in, or reduced to, terms of the visual sense, are dependent 
throughout on the same kind of discrimination of feelings, or 
feeling of discriminations, — we may use either term with al- 
most equal propriety. It is only when we rise into the world 
of concepts, on which all experimental science even has its 
eye, that reasoning with abstract thoughts and symbols, brings 
growth of knowledge about the real world to the human mind. 

Two classes of the more definitely " intellectual feelings " 
may be recognized in this connection. These are such as spur 
the intellect, and such as accompany, guide, and estimate its 
activities. The feeling of intellectual curiosity is not, indeed, 
an integral part of every act of cognition; it can scarcely be 
spoken of as an essential factor or concomitant of all knowl- 
edge. But it incites to those activities, of both an intellectual 
and an emotional sort, which determine, in the individual and 
in the race, the attainment and the growth of knowledge. 
Under its influence the child searches into the nature and uses 
of things. To it, far more than to any selfish or mercantile 
motive, modern science owes its splendid triumphs. Of its 
possible intensity Augustine bore witness when he declared: 
" My soul is on fire to know." Plato made desire, or Eros, 
the only avenue to philosophy; and the Prussian Queen was 
eager to die that she might know the things which even 
Leibnitz could not tell her. 

There are certain feelings, however, — and those of the 
higher nature, — which enter in an integrating way into the 
very substance of knowledge. One class of these may be called 
logical. There are peculiar feelings with which we affirm, and 
different feelings with which we deny. Even when we are, as 
we are accustomed to say, intellectually convinced, we cannot 
make a genuine affirmation or denial without an experience of 
these feelings. Affirmation and denial are even connected with 
definite forms of feeling dependent upon bodily attitudes. The 



PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE 73 

smooth, logical flow of our trains of thought is partly a mat- 
ter of feeling; hitches, or pauses, in these trains are emo- 
tional as well as intellectual attitudes of the mind. Feelings 
of recognition, feelings of attraction or repulsion, feelings of 
certainty or uncertainty, enter into every process of thought. 

Feelings of satisfaction do not simply announce and guar- 
anty for us the solution of a problem; they constitute an im- 
portant part of the solution itself. It is with no vain or un- 
meaning voice that we inquire after the truth of a proposition 
by asking : " Are you satisfied with the correctness of your 
solution ? " In the ultimate tests of all truth, both the ap- 
parent correctness of the logical processes involved, and the 
steadfast character of the emotions which the result evokes, 
combine to constitute what we call a satisfactory issue of the 
inquiry. 

The demand for a cause, with all the stimulus which this 
demand affords to the intellectual activity of the race, — of 
which, indeed, it is the principal and the perennial source — 
is an experience of an emotional rather than of an ideational 
t}^pe. As we shall see later, it is in the feeling-full experience 
of ourselves as wills that the notion of cause has its origin. 
The so-called principles of " sufficient reason " is no outgrowth 
of ratiocination. If it were such, it could never seem to let 
us into the mystery of the constitution, and relations of ac- 
tion and reaction, of different kinds of energies, which we, of 
necessity, believe we find in the real world. Here Schopen- 
hauer's sharp criticism of Kant for dismissing the part which 
feeling plays in giving " objectivity " to phenomena with the 
sentence, " Objects are given to us through our sensibility," 
is not without justification. And to speak of any reality, 
Thing or Self, as though it were merely a thought-object is 
to be false to the full content of the simplest act of cognition. 
The rather is Eiehl justified in saying : " For being is in no 
wise a constituent of an idea; it is experienced, felt, lived, 
not ideated or thought." 



74 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

The mighty part which aesthetical feelings play in all our 
knowledge of the world has rarely, or never, been sufficiently 
estimated by either psychology or philosophy. That our judg- 
ments about the beauty of natural objects, as well as the beauty 
of works of art, are chiefly prompted and guided and made in 
terms of aesthetical emotions, has indeed been recognized by 
writers on aesthetics and by students of art. This fact has 
also frequently been appealed to as an argument for the purely 
subjective character of such judgments. This scepticism affirms 
that beauty is in man as a matter of appreciative feeling only; 
but it denies that beauty is in nature, as a quality of the 
external object. How inadequately this sesthetical scepticism 
answers to the psychological analysis of the judgment which 
affirms beauty, and also to our philosophical notion of what 
the Being of the World really is, as known in terms of this 
judgment, will be made clear in a subsequent chapter. At 
present we are calling attention to a yet more general and 
important truth connected with the psychological view of 
knowledge. yEsthetical feeling enters into the very substance 
of knowledge. Both truths of fact and also many fanciful 
departures from truth of fact are apprehended and appre- 
ciated with a certain glow of feeling which is sesthetical in 
character. It is largely the satisfaction, which the myths and 
legends and fanciful conceptions, both religious and non-re- 
ligious, give to aesthetical feeling, that causes them to be re- 
garded as true. The fair and aesthetically pleasing, or the 
terrible and aesthetically appalling or awe-inspiring, has the 
preference for human minds, over such conceptions and judg- 
ments as afford no obvious point of contact with man's artistic 
emotions. 

To suppose that modern science has excluded or diminished 
the active and efficient presence of aesthetical feeling in our 
conceptions of nature and of humanity is a serious mistake. 
On the contrary, the nobler and higher forms of these emo- 
tions were never before so obvious and powerful as in the 



PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE 75 

positive sciences of the present day. More and more these 
sciences are all being re-constructed in terms corresponding 
to sesthetical ideals. Order, proportion, infinity and the in- 
finitesimal, the reign of law, the unity which is through in- 
finite variety, the conception of the all-embracing, all-produc- 
ing Ether, the very mystery and awfulness of the limitless 
areas of time and space in which ceaseless changes, involving 
life and death to countless beings in innumerable worlds, — 
these are all constructs of imagination which are born of 
sesthetical emotions and which forcefully appeal to the mother 
whose children they are. That science is constantly advancing 
in the proofs of their realization in the Being of the World 
is scientific evidence that this Being is itself constituted after 
the type furnished to our minds by sesthetical ideals. That 
science, in spite of seeming proofs of many exceptions to these 
ideals, still trusts its power in the future to reconcile the con- 
flicts produced by these exceptions, is evidence that the knowl- 
edge which calls itself "science" is influenced and shaped 
by the emotions which recognize the value for reality of these 
ideals. 

That ethical and religious emotions take no insignificant 
part in many forms of human knowledge could easily be made 
equally clear. But the evidence for this truth is more conveni- 
ently to be examined when we are treating of the subjects of 
moral philosophy and the philosophy of religion. 

Two important truths for our theory of knowledge may be 
deduced from this survey of the nature of knowledge as viewed 
from the point of standing taken by the psychologist. And, 
first: Knowing involves, in a living commerce, all the so- 
called faculties of the human soul. It is not thinking alone, 
or feeling alone, or willing alone. Indeed, neither of these 
so-called faculties can even have the part it plays in knowledge 
accurately described without reference to both the others. In- 
tellect is active and feeling-full, in all cognition. Feeling 
must prompt, guide, and accompany a more or less volun- 



76 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

tary process of thought, in order that cognition may be the 
result. Will must direct attention and control the motor or- 
ganism, in the intellect's feeling-full effort to discriminate the 
qualities of the object, and to judge its relation to other ob- 
jects. To say all this is, indeed, a weak and imperfect and 
halting way of describing that complex and mysterious achieve- 
ment which we call our knowledge. For the soul unites in a 
single grasp of consciousness those many and subtile forms 
of her behavior, which psychological science, with all its 
mechanism for analysis, can only partially detect and faultily 
describe. But, however lame in its description science may 
be — and this impotency to match successfully the speed and 
complexity and hidden art of nature's processes is not con- 
fined to psychological science — every plain man, who has ar- 
rived at adult self-consciousness, knows to some good purpose 
what it is for him to know. It is sorry work for the psycholo- 
gist to be ceaselessly trying to show how that cannot be true, 
which everybody knows is true; how the soul cannot possibly 
do what every knower is immediately aware of the potency 
and the fact of himself as doing. But this is what the ex- 
tremes of an idealistic egoism and of a crude common-sense 
realism in psychology both are fond and proud of seeming to 
accomplish. The one cannot conceive how a merely ideating 
subject can know a material object; the other cannot conceive 
how a real thing can become the object of an ideating Ego. 
But in truth and reality, the knower is not a mere ideating 
subject but an embodied thinking, feeling, willing Soul; and 
the object known is no construct of dead matter, but an incor- 
porate idea. In all knowing, subject and object are not loosely 
and indirectly joined by inference or idea; they are united 
in terms of an active commerce which serves to express more 
or less fully the characteristic being of each. What it is to 
know cannot be known by any analysis of the categories; 
what it is to know, in order to be known, must be experienced 
as a complex, vital fact. 



PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE 77 

The second truth is this : In knowledge, reality and idea are 
not separated and so in need of being subsequently united by 
judgment, conception, inference, or syllogism. The finished 
act of knowledge leaves no gap between the real and the ideal 
which science or speculation must subsequently see to having 
bridged. In every act of knowledge, the idea and the reality 
are present in the very act itself. Is it knowledge of myself 
that I am gaining? The very nature of the activity called 
self-conscious is such that it grasps together the Self as sub- 
ject and the Self as object, in the unity of one cognitive proc- 
ess. The proof that this cannot be, which is derived from the 
abstract possibility of dividing up the time required to come 
to self-consciousness into an infinite number of infinitesimal 
moments, is as silly from the points of view held by both com- 
mon-sense and genuine science, as was the argument of the 
ancient sceptics that Achilles could not overtake the tortoise. 
The vaster part of human knowledge, both of Selves and of 
Things, is indeed not of this so-called intuitive or immediate 
sort. It is remotely inferential and composed of more or less 
doubtful, or if true, only approximate inferences explanatory 
of these intuitive experiences. It results in constructing a 
Being of the World in terms of a complex metaphysical the- 
ory. But it must all be referred for its support back to the 
immediate knowledge which results from an intuitive but com- 
plex and developmental process of cognition. 



CHAPTER V 

KINDS, DEGREES, AND LIMITS OP KNOWLEDGE 

So far as the essential forms of mental life which enter 
into the act of cognition are concerned, there is only one kind 
of knowledge. The amounts of voluntary control of atten- 
tion and of the bodily organism, the intensity and variety of 
the feelings, and the proportion, so to say, of intuition and of in- 
ference, may vary greatly; but the character of the total proc- 
ess and of its resulting judgment admits of no radical change. 
Thus to know at all is a development; and all knowledge, 
whether of the practical or of the more strictly scientific sort, 
is a growth, both in the individual and in the race. 

When, however, we consider the different acts of cognition 
from the point of view of the objects known, the case is by 
no means the same. A division, or " diremption " (not as an 
act of violence or revolution, indeed), takes place so early in 
the mental life that its origins and causes are exceedingly 
difficult for psychology to explain. But the accomplishment 
of this process results in two kinds of knowledge which later 
seem to divide between them all known objects in the world of 
our experience; which distinguish and classify all forms of 
human science; and which become the occasions and explana- 
tory causes of two rival and perpetually recurring systems of 
metaphysics. These two kinds are the Knowledge of Things 
and the Knowledge of Self. 

It has just been said that psychology has difficulty in explain- 
ing how this more or less radical division of knowledge into 
two classes, according to its objects, originates ; and what are all 
the subtle and hidden influences which bring it about. With 
the newly born human infant there is, of course, no Tcnowl- 

78 



PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE 79 

edge whatever, whether of itself or of other selves or of things. 
It must "get to know" by an activity, at first impulsive and 
involuntary and not self-purposeful. The storm of new sen- 
sory impressions, both painful and pleasurable, which the 
forces of its natural environment call forth in consciousness, 
must be reduced to some kind of order and somehow classi- 
fied and " objectified," before the achievement of knowledge, 
properly so-called, can be reached. But since memory and 
self-consciousness are themselves forms of knowledge, and con- 
ditions, as well, of its higher development, no first-hand descrip- 
tion of what takes place in the earlier stages of its develop- 
ment ever reaches the attentive ear of the inquiring psycholo- 
gist. He has forgotten how it was with himself as he learned 
to know; for when it was thus with himself, he had as yet no 
recognitive memory formed, and was in fact no true Self. 
And no babe who is now learning to know can tell the psy- 
chologist how it is with itself; because to know one's self, and 
to describe this Self in terms of self-consciousness, is to have 
passed quite beyond the stage in which the origins of knowl- 
edge lie concealed. It is only then by a combination of data 
derived from observation and experiment, that psychology gives 
a confessedly doubtful and incomplete picture of that growth 
of knowledge in and through which every human cognitive 
consciousness distinguishes between its own Self and other 
selves and things. 

The differences in the two characteristic processes involved 
in making this most primary of all cognitive, objective distinc- 
tions lead to a doctrine of sense-perception on the one hand, 
and on the other, a doctrine of self-consciousness. And yet, a 
more careful analysis shows that without sense-perception self- 
consciousness could never be attained; while the development 
of the consciousness of a Self is indispensable to a knowl- 
edge of things. The two kinds of knowledge grow as one at 
first; then as two branches from one root; then as two trunks 
united at their base ; then as really separate and distinct species 



80 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

in the garden of the universe. Yet always, selves are known to 
themselves as having certain essential qualities like things; 
other selves are known to every individual Self through the 
manifestation of changes in things; and all things are known 
to all selves only as they manifest more or less perfectly their 
own self-like characteristics. In this way we are compelled 
to believe in the reality of both, in the actuality of their rela- 
tions of action and reaction, and in the essential unity of a 
world which embraces innumerable selves and infinitely nu- 
merous things. 

When psychological science studies the differences in the 
material, or " stuff," of knowledge, in order to see how and 
why the mind persists in dividing its objects into these two 
great classes, its search for facts and probable causes is better 
rewarded. Differences in the " feeling-tone " which is at- 
tached to different kinds of sensory impressions; differences in 
the relations which these sensory impressions sustain to our 
volitions; differences of both in their relations to changes in 
the bodily organism; differences in the character and persist- 
ence of the revived mental images and in the thoughts con- 
ceived, and the processes inferred: — all these and other differ- 
ences are seen to account for the division which the knower 
insists upon establishing and maintaining between himself and 
other selves and things. As the logicians would £ay : the con- 
tent of these two classes of objects is greatly different. It 
is visual and tactual sensation-complexes, with the memories, 
imaginings, thoughts and reasonings, referring to sensation- 
experiences, which characterize the content of so-called ex- 
ternal cognition. But the knowledge of Self has its content, 
not chiefly in sensations at all ; but in mental images, thoughts, 
feelings or volitions. 

Especially important is the difference in the relation toward 
what is called the " conative consciousness," which is sus- 
tained by these two classes of objects. This difference involves 
the compelling power which the object has over the attention, 



KINDS, DEGREES AND LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE 81 

and the relation it sustains to the motor organism, with the 
changes in the feeling of effort, and in the pleasurable or 
painful tone of our sensations, which accompany the control 
of the organism. The pleasure is mine; the pain is mine; but 
that which gives me the pleasure, although only under indirect 
or remote control by my will, or which causes the pain in spite 
of my felt muscular effort to remove it — that is " not-me." 
For in the vital, full-blooded experience of reality, there are 
no abstract conceptions of either Self or Things: there is the 
" I " that wills to strive for, and to have, and to enjoy ; and 
there is the "that-which" strives with me, and too often 
hurts or discomforts me, because it wills not as I will. 

In the earlier stages of self-knowledge, it is the feeling of the 
moving body which chiefly answers to the idea of the Self. 
What is here and now, what is not simply seen to move in 
sequence upon desire and volition, but is felt in vital contact 
with something else which the same desire and volition cannot 
move in like manner; what is warm with emotion, and suffers 
definitely localized pleasures or pains; — that is the present 
known Self of the child. The Self of its seemingly intuitive 
cognition is now present in arms, or legs, or back; and 
now in some region vaguely conceived of as within the ab- 
dominal or thoracic cavities. But even young children and the 
least developed savages do not wholly identify any one part 
of the body, or all the known parts taken collectively, with 
what they mean by " myself," or " I." And if, in the one 
aspect of experience, I seem obliged to feel that I am in the 
arm, the leg, the trunk, the vaguely localized internal space; 
in another aspect, both child and savage learn to know the leg, 
or arm, or trunk, or heart, as not Me but rather mine. Instead 
of the child and the savage being incapable of conceiving of a 
Self as a soul separable from the visible and tangible parts 
of the body; both savage and child perform this distinguish- 
ing act of imagination with too great freedom from the bonds 
of scientific accuracy and of respect for the testimony of a care- 



82 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

fully analyzed experience. The savage imagines himself a 
spirit which can wander far afield from his physical organism, 
and which can easily survive its dissolution; while the child 
developes such a wealth of conscious self-hood, that it can endow 
with its own feelings, its toys, its playmates, and all the 
natural objects of its enlarging environment. In the his- 
tory of the intellectual development of the race, this spiritual- 
izing of things, by imparting to them a kind of self-hood 
which is not necessarily embodied in an organism like our own, 
but which is thought of as separable from any particular form 
of material expression, has been an ever-persistent and power- 
ful factor. Science chastens, refines, and extends, the cogni- 
tive activities in which this anthropomorphizing imagination 
bears so prominent a part; it does not, and it cannot, free 
itself from essentially the same kind of anthromorphism. By 
knowledge the knower distinguishes himself from that which 
he knows; and yet that which he knows is known to him only 
in terms of correspondence to the knowing Self. Not-me, and 
yet somehow like-me, is the character with which knowledge 
stamps all its objects, whether selves or things. 

Just here, however, two very important distinctions emerge. 
These are, first, a distinction in the amounts of intuition, the 
degrees of immediacy, in the two kinds of knowledge; and, 
second, a distinction in the amount and certainty of the 
knowledge gained as to the real character of the object known. 
In a word, the knowledge of Self is, of all kinds of knowledge, 
most intuitive, immediate, and most characterized by the con- 
viction of certainty; of all objects, the Self rather than other 
selves or things, is most fully known as it really is. 

The first of these distinctions is illustrated and emphasized 
by all the experience of self-consciousness. As has already 
been said, this kind of cognitive activity is not a ready-made 
gift from nature's hand, but an achievement in the form of a 
development. In spite of the mystery, however, which shrouds 
its origins and earlier growth, its important and distinctive 



KINDS, DEGREES AND LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE 83 

characteristics are manifest beyond doubt. When I am in 
pain, or in a state of pleasurable excitement; when I am 
feeling any form of passion, affection, or sentiment; when / 
am indulging or pursuing any train of associated ideas or logic- 
ally connected thoughts ; then simply to say, " pain is," " pas- 
sion is," " ideas or thoughts are," does not by any means 
accurately describe the finished experience. I know that I am 
pained, am angry, loving, aspiring, am imagining or thinking, 
as the case may be. And within certain limits I can examine 
these conscious conditions, and thus learn more accurately 
what they are, as states or activities attributed to myself. To 
be sure, in the very effort at reflection I to some extent, and 
often almost completely, modify the conscious conditions which 
I examine; and if we refer to the relatively fleeting character, 
in time, of all our experiences with ourselves, we may say 
that, to speak with mathematical accuracy, it is the just past 
condition of the Self which is imperfectly remembered rather 
than the now present condition of the Self which is envisaged 
and intuitively known. But experience, whether with our- 
selves or with outside things, is not given in those infinitesimals 
of time and space with which calculus can deal, but of which 
human souls know nothing either by sense-perception or by 
self-consciousness. And all such argument, or conclusion from 
such argument, cannot diminish the confidence in its imme- 
diacy and certainty which the experience called self-conscious- 
ness imparts and justifies. That I may know, and at times 
do most fully and assuredly know, myself as being here-and- 
now in such and such a state, is a proposition on the validity 
of which not only all knowledge of Self is based, but also all 
knowledge of every sort whatever. Indeed, without admitting 
the significance and the validity of self-consciousness, we can 
form no conception whatever of what it is to know. This 
is a truth upon which philosophy can scarcely insist too often. 
A knower, who is incapable of self -consciousness, is as much 
a contradiction in terms as " wooden iron " is. 



84 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

The principal characteristics of self-conscious knowledge are 
about as plain as is the fact of its experience. They are of the 
nature of what we may call an " envisagement." They may be 
summed up in the two words, immediacy and indubitableness. 
When I know me, as being so or so affected or as being active 
in such or such a way, there is nothing, so to say, between 
the " I " who knows the " me " and the " me " who is known 
by the " I " ; and when analyzed so as to discover without 
exaggeration the value of the experience, doubt cannot attach 
itself successfully to the validity of the experience. To tell 
me that I am not in pain, when I know that I am, is to mock 
me; although the end of the mockery may induce me by the 
withdrawal of attention, or use of other expedient, to modify 
the painful state. 

From this distinction in the way of knowing, and as chiefly 
dependent upon it, there follows a distinction in the fullness 
with which the real nature of the object is known. In self- 
consciousness, knower and object known are one and the same 
eoul. In this act of cognition, the full nature of the object at 
the moment of cognition is made known to the subject. A 
pained, or passionate, or thoughtful " me " is the really exist- 
ent and indubitably known object of the self-conscious " I." 
As the experience of the Self with itself, and with other selves 
and things, increases in both extent and depth; as more and 
more objects are known by the Self, and as all known objects 
are more thoroughly and accurately known; the same kind of 
reflection makes us aware of a larger outfit of the powers 
of self-hood and of a greater complication in their exercise, 
and a greater wealth in their achievements. We know our- 
selves as experiencing forms of affection and sentiment of 
which the child is incapable. We know ourselves as having 
ambitions and aspirations that rise above and reach beyond 
the earlier and more primitive animal wants and desires of 
infancy and youth. We know ourselves as imagining things 
and event's in times and spaces, of which the undeveloped 



KINDS, DEGREES AND LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE 85 

mind could never dream or apprehend the meaning of as they 
are imaginatively depicted by others. We know ourselves 
as gaining practical knowledge or making scientific attain- 
ments by observations, experiments, and trains of thinking, 
quite superior to anything possible in the earlier years of 
mental development. We know ourselves as having concep- 
tions and sentiments and ideals of art, duty, and religion, of 
which only the faintest traces, or no traces whatever, can be 
found in the memories of one or more decades ago. Yet all 
these experiences of suffering and doing, of acting and being 
acted upon, are known only as they are attributed to the same 
Self as the subject of them all. And if I am asked what now, 
with the years of infinitely richer experience, I know myself 
to be, I must add greatly to the description of my self-known 
character. But everything I add, will belong as truly as 
ever to what I indubitably know myself really to be. For 
these experiences of suffering and action, however highly de- 
veloped and complexly organized, are all of myself, with my- 
self. They make up, together with the inferences which may 
be based upon them, the conception of what I really am. 
Whether the inferences are justifiable, or not, may indeed be 
questioned; but that I really am the subject of these experi- 
ences, and that I really am what they, as a basis, show me to 
myself to be, cannot be called in question. Since these ex- 
periences have not yet reached a fixed limit, and especially 
since imagination and intellect do not find themselves exhausted 
in their inferences from these acts of self-knowledge, there is 
warrant for believing that the personality is really something 
more, perhaps much more, than it now knows itself to be. 
The development of this truth about the connection between 
knowledge and reality must be left to the metaphysics of mind. 
The fact of this truth is essential to note in forming a correct 
and tenable theory of knowledge. 

With the knowledge of other selves and of things, the case 
is not the same. Things are known by sense-perception and 



86 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

not by self-consciousness. The distinction, however, does not 
amount to a complete separation in the character of the two 
kinds of knowledge, or in the two kinds of objects that are 
known. There is a certain immediacy and sureness of con- 
viction about the knowledge which comes through the senses. 
A completed act of sense-perception, like self-consciousness, 
leaves no doubt as to the real existence of the object known. 
Indeed, for the earlier developments of knowledge what we 
sense is the very type of what we most immediately and in- 
dubitably know. Psychological analysis shows, indeed, that 
this kind of knowledge is also a development; that things do 
not exist ready-made, for the passive mind to be impressed 
with; that knowing things is no mere copying-off process. 
And the physico-chemical sciences are revealing — during the 
past two decades in ways of wonder never even dreamed of 
before — how unlike anything which our senses can immedi- 
ately envisage is the infinitely complicated and hidden consti- 
tution of things. Yet all this science is based upon the same 
confidence in the immediacy and indubitable character of the 
experience of sense-perception, when correctly analyzed and 
properly understood. From that undiscoverable moment, 
when the baby perceives any object which, however dimly and 
imperfectly, it sets outside of its own consciousness; when it 
locates any painful or pleasurable feeling in some visible or 
tangible part of its own organism; especially when it bumps 
against, or pushes against, or enters into a muscular contest 
with its own object of sense; from that very moment there 
is the beginning of the knowledge of a world that is not-me. 
This experience it is which develops into a science of a world 
of things. And under the conditions which are fulfilled in 
every primitive but completed act of sense-perception, there is 
the irresistible feeling of immediacy, and of confidence in the 
reality of the object. The psychological interpretation of this 
experience has been briefly referred to in an earlier chapter. 
We have there found that it is, in its chief characteristic, 



KINDS, DEGREES AND LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE 87 

best described as the feeling of a will opposed, of a will ex- 
periencing a will which does not will as does the will of the 
knower. 

The same immediacy cannot, however, be claimed for the 
development of this knowledge of things by sense-perception 
and of the knowledge of Self by self-consciousness. That 
there is something not-myself I indubitably and immediately 
know in the experience of sense-perception. What are the 
characteristics, the qualities, and the habitual modes of be- 
havior of this something must be learned by a system of in- 
ferences. That I am really suffering pain when the coal burns 
me, I know; but what the coal is really doing when it pains 
me, I do not know except as physical science can inform me. 
That I see the glowing coal as extended in space, I surely 
know, and in the act of seeing I know what sight as an experi- 
ence really is; but what it is to be in space, or how it is that 
that thing can cause me to see it as extended in just that space, 
I do not know with the same immediacy and certainty. 

When, then, a more complete and truly inward answer 
to the question, What are things really? is required, there is 
no other resort than to analogy. We see them moving, chang- 
ing their own shapes and relations to one another in space. 
While maintaining certain more or less relatively permanent 
characteristics, the individual things are ever altering the 
details in the manifestation which they make to our senses. 
These more permanent or more mutable forms of manifestation 
we know in terms of our own experience. But what are they 
really that so manifest themselves to us? That they are not 
really altogether what they seem, science is always more 
abundantly convincing us. But science can only interpret 
them, since science is human, in terms of human experience. 
It can only render more subtle and complicated the argument 
from analogy. For all our terms of experience are known, 
as to what they really are as experiences, only in and through 
self-consciousness. And here the human mind falls into a 



88 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

condition of being puzzled and in doubt, from which the posi- 
tive sciences have as yet done only a little to extricate it. 
Many things, which certainly are not ourselves, are known to 
us as other selves. This is matter of a system of inferences 
from signs, which is so complete and convincing as to solve all 
doubts. These thing-like beings, are really selves like ourselves 
— the human beings of our acquaintance, either personal, or 
through description, or in history. Then there are other not 
quite so self-like things: these are the animals of one species 
or another. The more self-like they are, the better we know 
them as they really are. The owner knows his faithful dog or 
horse, in terms of his own sensation, feeling, and thinking. 
But in what terms shall the human mind conceive how a 
clam, or a jelly-fish, or an amoeba, senses, feels, and thinks, in 
its varying relations to other things? And then there are the 
plants: how soulful and intelligent is the behavior of some of 
them, and how do they seem consciously to rejoice in their own 
delicate beauty, or majestic strength ! But are they really like 
us in these regards — which are the only regards under which 
we can present to ourselves the reality of their inward life? 
And shall we stop our system of analogical inferences with 
them? Is not modern science driving into the abyss of an ab- 
surd and impossible conception, all thought of " dead " matter, 
or of purposeless and inactive things? Why, then, should man 
not interpret the Universe as a totality, in terms of reality as 
experienced by himself; and that is to say, in terms of an ex- 
perience of the life of a Self? 

Especially important and even decisive, therefore, for a valid 
theory of knowledge is this truth: The reality of the subject 
and the reality of the object, and also the actuality of that 
relation between subject and object which is essential to cogni- 
tion, are an indubitable experience in every act, both of sense- 
perception and of self -consciousness. The reality is not a 
matter of mere thinking, or of mere believing, or of merely 
mental representation. To use, while rejecting as appropriate, 



KINDS, DEGREES AND LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE 89 

the misleading Kantian phrase : It is no " phenomenal reality " 
which the knower knows himself to be and to cognize in his 
object. The relation established by knowledge is not an ab- 
straction or an image of that which may, or may not be, 
actual fact'. No merely grammatical or merely logical descrip- 
tion covers completely any experience of knowledge, whether 
its object be the Self or some Thing. 

Several kinds of knowledge which are based upon other 
principles of division than that which chiefly distinguishes the 
character of the object known, require a brief notice. But 
they are all of secondary importance; they do not change the 
essential nature of the cognitive process. Thus Schopenhauer 
soundly berates Kant (and, indeed, not without a show of 
reasons) for exalting conceptions so far above perceptual 
knowledge. He then himself reverses the position of concep- 
tion and intuition so completely as to deprive the intellect of 
all claim to arrive at truth of reality. By a kind of non- 
sensuous intuition, such as Kant supposed only God himself 
could possess, Schopenhauer arrives at the conclusion that the 
essence of Thing-in-itself is " Will." But " Thing-in-itself " 
is no-thing, is nothing but an abstraction so " pure " that it 
leaves no mist of imagination to clothe itself withal; just as 
unconscious or subconscious, or non-self-conscious mind is no 
cognitive mind whatever; for consciousness, as we have seen, 
is essential to knowledge — in each of the several forms in 
which human beings can have knowledge, or even conceive of 
what it is to have knowledge. In a word, the very distinction 
between perceptual and conceptual knowledge is one of de- 
grees only; and knowledge itself is impossible without both 
insight and inference. Man must both believe and think in 
order to know at all; the most abstract conceptions rest upon 
a basis of perceptions; the arguments by which the purest 
mathematics reaches the conclusions of its most abstruse and 
imaginary problems rise and fall upon a scaffolding of con- 
crete sensuous experiences. In this respect the contention of 



90 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

Schopenhauer is undoubtedly true : " The given material of 
every philosophy is accordingly nothing else than the empirical 
consciousness, which divides itself into the consciousness of 
one's own self and the consciousness of other things/' 

As to Degrees of Knowledge the principle of continuity 
applies in a most interesting and instructive way. It is cus- 
tomary, indeed, to speak of knowing as though it were sharply 
distinguished from believing, conjecturing, imagining, opin- 
ing, or even from theorizing and arguing with one's self about 
the actuality of alleged facts or the truth of avowed princi- 
ples. And at the extremes there is no difficulty, and no lack 
of confidence, in making such distinctions. But there is, in 
fact, only one sort of knowledge that can be called " absolute " ; 
and there is no human knowledge that, by any stretch of 
courtesy or admiration for the wonderful capacity of man, can 
be called " perfect " knowledge. To ask in a sceptical, or 
even fairly critical spirit, the question "Are you absolutely 
sure ? " is to sound the call to a long chase and a tedious hunt, 
if indeed any game at all is to reward the search by the close 
of the day. 

There is one act of cognition, however, which, although it 
is, like all cognition, the result of a development that requires 
for its achievement all the processes which psychological 
science finds to belong of necessity to the very nature of cog- 
nition, merits the title " absolute " in the strictest possible 
meaning of the word. This is the consciousness of the here- 
and-now being of the Self; but it is not the equivalent of 
absolute self-knowledge. That I was then-and-there, can be 
known only by memory; and memory is not infallible. It 
requires much difficult analysis and subtle argument to ex- 
pound the doctrine of personal identity. That I have been 
between the then-and-there of memory and the here-and-now 
of self-consciousness, can be known only by inference. And 
inference as to the continuance of the same existences through 
the passage of time is always subject to doubt; while to tell in 



KINDS, DEGREES AND LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE 91 

what sense I am really the same, notwithstanding the un- 
doubted fact that in every important particular I have greatly 
changed, taxes all the resources of the metaphysics of mind. 
The highest degree of human cognitive experience, the type 
under which man must conceive of absolute knowledge, is 
given in the sentence : " I am here-and-now " — suffering pain 
or experiencing pleasure, mainly given up to an act of sense- 
perception, or indulging in imaginings, or active in thought. 
Of this concrete, but complex, fact of present experience, I 
cannot doubt. To doubt is but to affirm it in another form. 

It was this experience of self-consciousness with its essential 
implicates, which Descartes intended to enunciate as the fun- 
damental principle of his epistemology in the form of the 
celebrated maxim : Cogito, ergo sum. What criticism finds in 
this principle to serve as a cure for scepticism, and what 
scepticism may still demand of criticism with regard to the 
Cartesian and other implications of this principle, will 
occupy our attention elsewhere. It is enough at present to 
have pointed out the general characteristics of that experience 
in which a conception of the highest, most truly absolute and 
indubitable knowledge, is realized by man. It is the experience 
of a soul with itself as its own object of knowledge. Nor need 
we repeat again how powerless all sceptical analysis of self- 
consciousness is in its effort to destroy or impair the validity 
of this act of self-knowledge. What I know myself actually 
to be to myself, that I know absolutely. 

In saying this, however, the word " absolute " is used to 
stamp this knowledge gained by self-consciousness with the 
one mark of indubitable certainty. Certain, such knowledge 
certainly is; not subject of doubt, such an act of cognition 
doubtless is. But this absolute knowledge is as meagre, un- 
stable, and fleeting — or " relative " — as it is absolute. The 
very act of self-consciousness in which it is achieved is, from 
the point of view of psychological science as well as from that 
of the life-history of a soul, just a bare moment in existence 



92 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

and then it fades away never to return. How can it, which 
is itself so evanescent and dream-like, establish the standing 
in reality of its own self, not to say, the reality of other things. 
For at this point, we might confess that the term proposed by 
psychologists who object to talking about souls as though they 
were really existent agencies, or free and relatively independent 
wills, — namely, " a stream of consciousness," — is a complete 
misnomer. Indeed, a more unfortunate and misleading figure 
of speech could scarcely be employed. There can be no real 
"stream" of a physical sort, without an established and per- 
manent continuity to the different sections or moments of the 
stream. If each preceding thinnest section of the stream is 
taken up before the next is laid down, then the process of lay- 
ing down the sections may go on forever, but there will be no 
stream. In the soul's life, however, there appears now an act 
chiefly of self-consciousness and then an act chiefly of sense- 
perception; now an experience of pleasure and then an experi- 
ence of pain ; now a state of consciousness characterized mainly 
by imagination, and then one of passion or of serious thought. 
But these all are a series of states; and in the series there is 
no one of many members of the series which remains in place 
so as to connect with its neighbor and thus maintain the actu- 
ality of a continuous stream. Neither does the Ego sit sta- 
tionary upon the bank, as it were, and watch the stream go by; 
for, as we have said, there is no stream going by, and, if there 
were, the watcher could not separate himself from the stream. 
Still further, this achievement of absolute knowledge, which 
is so temporary and so limited in content, must be learned, 
so to say; and it is a kind of learning, in the attainment and 
practice of which, for the bare sake of establishing a theory 
of knowledge, very few men — and fortunately! — have any 
particular interest. If, then, one refuses to accept as knowl- 
edge all cognitions which are not absolute, one may as well 
surrender at once the hope of knowing anything whatever. 
For all the knowledge which men have, and use, and develope, 



KINDS, DEGREES AND LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE 93 

— whether it is called practical or scientific, or philosophical, 
— is only relative with regard to the degree of certainty which 
can be attached to it. There is no escape, then, from the con- 
clusion that in a valid meaning of the words, all human knowl- 
edge is relative: — namely, in self-consciousness we have given 
the absolute knowledge that we are, and what we are, but only 
just then and there; while in sense-perception we have given 
the conviction that something not ourselves is here, and now, 
but what it is, we can never absolutely know. 

The growth of all knowledge comes through inferences 
which land us, either by what seems a kind of unavoidable 
leap, or else by way of slower and often difficult and tedious 
processes of thinking, at the standing place of a system of 
so-called judgments. These judgments affirm or deny qual- 
ities and relations of things and selves; and they constitute for 
the individual knower a more or less orderly, but' always con- 
siderably tangled and confused, net- work of knowledge about 
things and selves. But, again, unless we say that to " know 
about " is really to know, we must confine the realm of knowl- 
edge so strictly as to exclude from it all practical, scientific, 
or philosophical value, as real truth. It would seem, then, 
that higher and lower degrees of probability, as judged by 
the reasons which commend and certify our acts of knowl- 
edge, and somewhat corresponding degrees of scepticism or 
uncertainty, must characterize all the achievements of man's 
cognitive faculties. For such is human knowledge; and he 
who will have none of it, because it is all qualified with the 
possibility of error, and stamped with the certainty of imper- 
fection, must somehow make of himself either much more or 
much less than a man. 

The different processes involved in these inferences, the 
methods of testing the resulting judgments, the assignments 
of amount of truth or error that is in them, — and, in a word, 
the descriptive history of how knowledge grows, in the individ- 
ual and in the race; all this belongs to psychology and to 



94 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

logic to investigate and to expound. Philosophy, in the branch 
of it called epistemology, however, is chiefly concerned with 
the limits and the guaranty of knowledge. But the applica- 
tion of the different standards employed to fix these limits, 
and to establish this guaranty, result in calling our attention 
once more to the varying degrees of knowledge as seen from 
somewhat different points of view. Thus, for example, there 
is so-called " practical " knowledge. The man who is lacking 
in this is said not to have common-sense. He does not know 
enough about things and about other selves to adjust himself 
properly to them, in what must be for them and for him, a 
common environment. A great lack of such knowledge, due 
to deficiency of native or developed knowing faculty, is idiocy. 
If, however, the failure in respect of such knowledge is rather 
due to lack of interest in, or of practice upon, this more com- 
mon class of objects, the man is said to be awkward, odd, un- 
practical. Scientific knowledge, which aims to know about 
things and selves their more hidden and subtile, but often 
most essential, qualities and relations, assumes to itself the 
title to a higher degree of value. Sometimes its devotees 
claim to scorn the practical, and to pursue knowledge "for 
its own sake," and quite irrespective of the application to 
life of the truths which science discovers. But the concep- 
tion of knowledge for its own sake is a figment, a myth; all 
human knowledge is of man, and for man's sake. Yet the 
satisfactions which come from knowing are among the choicest 
achievements of the human soul. This same statement ap- 
plies to so-called philosophical truth, whether we consider 
the latter to be superior or inferior in the degree of its as- 
surance, or of its worth and dignity, to scientific truth. From 
the point of view of value, as fixed by the loftiest sentiments 
and practical demands of the human soul, the truths of morals, 
art, and religion are supreme. From the point of view taken 
by him who insists upon clear perception of fact, experi- 
mental testing which can be carried on under strict control, 



KINDS, DEGREES AND LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE 95 

and logical procedure leading to incontestable conclusions about 
comprehensible objects, these truths about human ideals seem 
to stand lowest in the scale of knowledge. Indeed, many 
would deny that they can ever be established so as to claim 
title to admittance within the properly guarded realm of 
human knowledge. They must, the rather, it is then asserted, 
be relegated to the realm of beliefs, or opinions, or conjec- 
tures, dependent upon the individual's attitude of faith. Here, 
once more, attention is called back to the psychological facts: 
Belief, opinion, conjecture, activities and products of imagina- 
tion, influences from sentiment and prejudice, irrational tend- 
encies to dogmatism or equally irrational tendencies to scep- 
ticism and agnosticism, mix with and control every act in 
every kind of human cognition. 

There is one most important truth with which for the 
present we leave the discussion of this subject: Knowledge 
cannot be considered apart from life. Whatever kind of 
value knowledge has, and whatever degree is attainable in 
any particular kind of value, knowledge is also always a means 
to an end that lies above itself. That end is the life of a self- 
conscious person. But this life must be understood and in- 
terpreted in no niggardly fashion. Its aims, and satisfactions, 
and final purposes, are not to be found wholly in intelligent 
commerce with things; they are even more perfectly realized 
in an intelligent grasp upon, and in a rational appreciation 
and serious pursuit of, the invisible and non-sensuous ideals 
of morals, art, and religion. 

No subject in philosophy has been productive of more un- 
reasonable dogmatism on the one hand, or of equally unrea- 
sonable agnosticism on the other, than the discussion of the 
Limits of Knowledge. If in affirming these limits it is meant 
virtually to say that man has no other way of knowing than 
the human way, and that what lies beyond this human way 
must be unknown; then the statement is as undeniable as it 
is worthless. To know is to relate: therefore, we are told, 



96 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

all knowledge is essentially relative and limited. But one may 
ask: What else wonld you have; or even conceive of as some- 
thing better, if only it could be attained? Certainly, knowl- 
edge implies a knower, and an object known, and a relation 
established between them. The researches of psychology, logic, 
and epistemology are designed to tell us precisely what an 
experience of knowledge really is. Which of the three factors 
would the agnostic dispense with: — the knower, the object, 
or the relation in which the essence of the cognitive experience 
consists? To convert the relativity of all knowledge into an 
axiom, in order to create suspicion, or to breed ignorance, is 
exactly to reverse the conclusion at which an analysis of the 
nature of knowledge compels us to arrive. 

That man's knowledge is limited, in respect to (1) the 
range of its accuracy and refinement, (2) the number of the 
objects which can be included in a single grasp of conscious- 
ness, and (3) the speed and trustworthiness of its inferences 
and conclusions, is undoubtedly true. In all these respects, 
however, we must at once supplement and correct words of dis- 
couragement by words of cheer and hope. There is no little 
evidence to show, not only that all knowledge for the indi- 
vidual and for the race is a matter of growth, but even that 
the extent to which the limits of human knowledge may be 
pushed out into the boundless ocean of the unknown, by the 
development of human cognitive faculty and by the extension 
and refinement of scientific methods, cannot itself confidently 
be limited at the present time. In his celebrated chapter " On 
the Ground of the Distinction of Objects in general into Phe- 
nomena and Noumena," Kant compares the whole domain of 
human knowledge to an island "enclosed by nature itself 
within limits that can never be changed." For around this 
island there is " a wide and stormy ocean," full of fog-banks 
and of ice : the ocean is " the home of illusion," but the island 
is "the country of truth." But in the Kantian theory, even 
the truth of this country is not truth, as either the plain man, 



KINDS, DEGREES AND LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE 97 

the man of science, or the philosopher, understands truth. 
It is only the truth which phenomena seem to have, when they 
are made " objective " by man's intellect in forms imparted 
to them wholly by the activities of the intellect itself. The 
island itself then is " the home of illusion " ; and its limits 
are set by a fog-bound ocean, the very nature of which we 
cannot know, or trust the intellect correctly to dream about. 
Now all this, we submit, reverses the terms on which we 
have our actual experience of knowledge. The island is in- 
deed " the country of truth " ; but it is truly this because it 
is the domain within which we have commerce by knowledge, 
with reality. And the domain of the island is not limited by 
a wholly invisible and stormy ocean, "the home of illusion/' 
Even the ocean itself is part of the same nature which we are 
constantly knowing better as it really is. Wide and limitless, 
if you please, is this ocean; but man is constantly navigating 
further and further into its expanses; and as far as he goes 
he knows better how both island and ocean are one Universe, 
in which is immanent One Mind, whom religious faith wor- 
ships as God. Without introducing at this point the ideals 
of philosophy and religion, we are justified in saying that prac- 
tical knowledge, such as men live and die by, as well as all 
the particular sciences, are in agreement as to a growth of 
knowledge of the One World, which cannot be arbitrarily lim- 
ited in the a priori way of the thorough-going Kantian agnos- 
ticism. 

A detailed consideration of all the factors and so-called 
avenues of human knowledge would bring us to the same 
reasonably modest, but hopeful conclusion with regard to the 
extension of the limits of knowledge. It was as customary 
for a now old-fashioned philosophy to discredit the knowl- 
edge gained by the senses, as it was for an old-fashioned the- 
ology to discredit the nature and worth of the body. We 
know, for example, that to the unaided, average eye, the limits 
in the color scale lie between the deep red and the violet rays; 



98 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

and for the average ear, between tones of perhaps from 14 
to a possible 40,000 or 50,000 vibrations in a second. These 
limits may perhaps be extended in the future developments 
of the organs of sight and sound. But whether the limits of 
seeing colors and hearing musical tones are much extended 
in these directions or not, the discoveries of the constitution 
of matter, of the nature of material processes, and of the laws 
of physical relations, in time and in space, which are made 
conceivable for these senses by means of modern instrumenta- 
tion and experiment, admit of no such limit. Even now we 
are having actual experiences of minute divisions of material 
bodies, with astonishing speed of motion, and through for- 
merly impenetrable media, — all of which might easily have 
been pronounced beyond the limits of human cognition, less 
than three decades ago. And to lament that such knowledge 
does not take us beyond the limits of the senses after all, is 
to turn silly for the pure sake of being sorry. That by sight 
we cannot get at things which are by nature invisible, or by 
hearing compass thoughts and melodies that are inaudible, 
is simply and appropriately to confess that there is knowledge 
which transcends the sensuous, and that can be reached and 
verified only in some non-sensuous way. 

Less easy even would it seem to be to set arbitrary limits 
to the knowledge of those beings and those truths which rea- 
son apprehends and validates, in the exercise of its higher 
faculties of imagination and thought, and with the confi- 
dence justified by its loftier sentiments and ideals. The ex- 
periences of righteous conduct, of devotion to duty and of 
satisfaction in its fruits; the love of beauty and the intelli- 
gent appreciation of the products and ideals of art; the life 
of faith and hope and resignation as a steadfast attitude 
toward the Infinite Spirit, the conception of whom represents 
the religious development of the race; — all these forms of 
human experience furnish the material upon the development 
and increased wealth of which, reflective thinking extends with- 



KINDS, DEGREES AND LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE 99 

out assignable limits the knowledge of mankind. For here are 
facts; and knowledge of facts is the foundation of all 
growth of knowledge. And these facts, like all others, solicit 
and demand explanation by the human mind. Explanation 
of facts constitutes science — a term which can not properly be 
arrogated to the exclusive use of certain kinds of explanation 
for certain classes of facts. Although the methods of proof 
are not identical, and the character of the conclusions reached 
as well as of the feelings of certainty attaching to them are 
not precisely the same, we cannot exclude ethical, sesthetical, 
and religious experience from the domain within which real 
knowledge is possible. They are part of the island which 
is " the country of truth " ; and as we have already said, 
the island is not "enclosed by nature itself within limits that 
can never be changed." On the contrary, the very nature of 
the island is constantly to increase its domain by taking in 
more and more of the surrounding ocean. Nor is the ocean 
any longer " the home of illusion " ; the less so constantly, 
as not only the physico-chemical sciences, but also the forms of 
knowledge known as ethics, aesthetics, and the science of re- 
ligion, illuminate and interpret more of its infinite expanse 
and fathomless depths. Indeed, all these various ways of 
knowing the Being of the World are necessary to the fuller 
knowledge; for they all suggest and increasingly confirm the 
opinion that It is indeed the Ground and the Interpreter of 
them all. 

There is, therefore, only one field of contention by conquer- 
ing which agnosticism, in its most comprehensive form, can 
fix arbitrary and a priori limits to the future growth of hu- 
man knowledge. And when this form of agnosticism has its 
claim critically examined, it is found that instead of setting 
limits to knowledge, it confuses and misstates the entire 
psychological doctrine of knowledge, and from the point of 
view of a philosophical theory, makes all knowledge whatever 
impossible. Such agnosticism, therefore, issues in a scepticism, 



100 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

at once so really shallow and so seemingly profound, that it 
is convicted of reaching depths that seem impenetrable only 
because it skims their surface so hastily. 

The denial of all real knowledge, whatever be the character 
of the object upon which the knower expends himself, or what- 
ever the skillful and laborious industry with which the ex- 
penditure is made, requires a completely sceptical outcome to 
a criticism of the so-called " categories," or fundamental and 
constitutional forms of the activity of knowing faculty. In 
a word, this theory virtually holds that man's mental organism, 
naturally and necessarily, works illusion, or the appearance 
of commerce with reality, rather than a knowledge which is, 
first, an apprehension and then a growing comprehension, of 
the nature of reality. Taking the argument of Kant in his 
celebrated " Critique of Pure Eeason " with a strict con- 
sistency, such universal and complete scepticism is undoubt- 
edly its logical and avowed issue. But many assumptions, even 
in this book as well as the main tendency and principal con- 
clusions of the other two Critiques, are corrective of, if not 
contradictory to, such a sceptical result. Whether the criti- 
cism of the categories legitimately leads to a sceptical outcome 
must occupy us in a later chapter. 



CHAPTER VI 

PRINCIPLES AND PRESUPPOSITIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 

Descriptive psychology must be followed by criticism, if 
we are to arrive at any tenable theory of knowledge as a worthy 
part of systematic philosophy. This criticism at the very be- 
ginning reveals the influence upon all our thinking, and so 
upon all human knowledge, of certain principles. Continued 
still further, the same criticism discovers certain presupposi- 
tions, which are customarily only matters of feeling or of 
faith, and certain implicates which, although not ordinarily 
recognized, really lie hidden in every act of cognition. These 
principles, presuppositions, and implicates, must be subjected 
to reflective thinking in order to arrive at a philosophical 
theory of knowledge. 

If now we turn to so-called " pure " or " formal " logic, in 
the shape in which it was cultivated and prevailed from the 
days of Aristotle downward until nearly the present date, we 
find that its authorities reduced the principles of all thought 
to the following two : " The Principle of Identity and Non- 
contradiction " ; and " The Principle of Sufficient Keason." 
For its statement of these principles logic has, at different 
times, adopted different formulas; sometimes words, some- 
times letters, sometimes numbers, sometimes geometrical fig- 
ures or other symbols. As a true interpretation, or even 
description, of the warm-blooded, inconsequential, and fleet- 
footed life of real thought, all these formulas are as unsatis- 
factory as are the geometrical arrangements of the electrons 
made in order to explain the qualitative differences of the 
chemical atoms. Indeed, all such symbols, instead of explain- 
ing or faithfully describing the actual processes which go on 
in the formation and extension of those acts of judging which 

101 



102 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

men call " knowing," are too often misleading as to the essen- 
tial nature of the processes themselves. 

That knowledge is not all thought, nor the cognitive act 
all to be explained in terms of the logical processes, has al- 
ready been made sufficiently clear. But it has been made 
equally clear that there is no knowledge, however intuitive 
it may seem, which does not involve judgment, and no growth 
of knowledge which does not require inference and the con- 
catenation, or chaining together, of judgments. The real sig- 
nificance and influence of the two alleged principles of all 
thought just referred to must, therefore, be understood in 
order to interpret the nature, and guarantee the validity, of 
the human knowing faculty. 

It was customary for the older treatises upon formal logic 
to throw the Principle of Identity into some such form as the 
following: A is A; and, then, the Principle of Non-contradic- 
tion could properly take the obverse shape in the formula : 
A is not non-A. Looked at more closely, three observations are 
at once suggested as helpful for elucidating the meaning for 
experience of this interesting, if exceedingly dry way of pic- 
turing a mental phenomenon; or rather, of stating a rule 
governing all mental phenomena, so far as they are phenomena 
of thought. And, first, that A is ("really and truly," as 
children say) A, and that A is not non-A, cannot possibly 
be made the subject of argument. For if I do not hold fast 
to the judgment or belief, — call it what one will, — that the 
first A, or A in the place of subject, is A, I cannot affirm 
whether it is identical with the predicate A, or not. It fol- 
lows, in the same way, that the verity of the principle of 
non-contradiction cannot be argued. With regard to both 
l As, whose identity I am called upon to affirm, I can only 
state my confidence in the following terms: This subject- A' 
is subject- A; and this predicate- A is predicate-A. And 
now I am ready to go the whole thing over again and end 
with an equally barren and unillumining result. 



PRINCIPLES AND PRESUPPOSITIONS 103 

But, second, it is not in the spirit of jesting, or of mock- 
ing at the many well-meant attempts to reduce to symbolism 
the principles of the life of thought, that we affirm the mis- 
leading and untruthful character of the principle of identity, 
whether as applied to the reality of the Self, or of Things, 
or to the actuality of the relations happening between them. 
A is never really A; there is neither in reality nor in think- 
ing any such identity or affirmation of identity as can be in- 
telligently symbolized in any such way. Things are never 
identical with other things; much less even are selves identi- 
cal with other selves. Indeed, here the maintenance of being- 
at-all forbids the establishment of such identity. Neither 
is any Self, or any Thing, so far as we know or can know, 
identical with itself, in the only meaning which, as it would 
seem, the formula " A-is-A " is fitted to express. The very life 
of the Self, the essential being of the Thing, consists in change. 
Strictly speaking, it is at all, only as it is not the same as 
it was — even at the beginning of that moment — the actual 
" is " — which is spanned by the grasp of a single act of cog- 
nitive consciousness. Still further: to think is to change. 
The knower cannot, even while knowing, remain the same 
with himself, in any such meaning of the word " same " as 
is fully symbolized by logical formulas. And to predicate A 
of any subject-Thing called A, is to recognize, in their effect? 
upon our consciousness, certain changes which we are com- 
pelled to suppose are changes in the states and activities of 
the real thing. So far as concrete experience goes, therefore, 
we never come upon any example of identity in the form sym- 
bolized by logic. Thought discriminates similarities and di- 
versities. As an accompaniment of all sense-perception, or 
rather as an essential element in the knowledge of things 
gained through the senses, the intellect recognizes or infers 
enough of likeness between the successive appearances which 
it localizes more or less definitely up or down, to right or left, 
near by or far away, to warrant attributing them to one and 



104 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

the same thing. How much the similarity must be, or how 
rapid may be the changes that can take place without destroy- 
ing the reality of the thing, only experience can help us to 
decide. Enough for practical purposes is ordinarily enough 
to satisfy the mind. Is this oak tree the same ("identically" 
the same) with that which I set out as a boy, now that I come 
back as an old man, to view it in my boy-hood home? Yes 
and No, — according to the point of view. Am I, who remem- 
ber setting it out, and who am now sad or pleased at the 
memory, the same (" identically " the same) I, that I was 
then? Yes and No, — according to the point of view. But 
surely, if I cannot say, not only I am I, but I that now am, 
this present I, am the same I that then was, and has been since 
then and now, there is no possible warrant for my affirming 
the identity of the tree. Now all this is but to say that sim- 
ilarities are matters of experience, either through sense-per- 
ception and self-consciousness, or through memory and infer- 
ence. But in all this there is no recognition of the principle 
of identity, as it is symbolized by logic and strictly so-called. 

In the third place, we see that the principle which logic has 
tried to symbolize in so barren and unsatisfactory a way, may 
be re-stated as it is actually in control of the life and growth 
of the human intellect, in somewhat the following man- 
ner. In all judgment, truth requires a certain, at least momen- 
tarily fixed relation of agreement or disagreement between the 
subject and the predicate of the same judgment. We may 
change our judgments about both things and selves. Indeed, 
the growth of knowledge, the correction of error, the contra- 
diction of falsehood, all require a change of judgments. If 
we represent any particular thing to ourselves by A as the 
subject of all judgments about it; then we must be con- 
stantly changing the predicate As, in order to express our 
knowledge of the subject-A. And as its predicates are 
changed, of course the thing as known by us cannot remain 
the same thing. But every particular judgment, affirming 



PRINCIPLES AND PRESUPPOSITIONS 105 

or denying A of A, must have a fixed meaning for the sub- 
ject-.! and also for the predicate-4, if truth of experience is 
to be expressed in that particular judgment. For example, 
we may say that the same chameleon is now one color and 
then another; that it is reddish in one place and greenish in 
another; that it is now changing from red to green. But I 
cannot say that the same chameleon is both red and green at 
precisely the same spot and precisely the same instant of time. 
Why not? Because experience does not show me colored sur- 
faces in this way. If now by the A in the place of the predi- 
cate, I mean one of two characteristics which experience has 
shown me to be, not only exclusive of each other, but to have 
opposed or contradictory significance ; then I cannot affirm them 
to belong to the same subject-J. at the same instant of time. 
In a word, the judgment must, in its meaning, correspond with 
the experience of the facts. Judging faculty is bound to con- 
sistency, since its whole intent and function is to represent 
the truth of reality. Lying and self-deceit illustrate this in- 
herent obligation, which is of the nature of a necessity, a 
binding law, as explicitly and forcefully as do the most care- 
fully prepared judgments of the exact sciences. 

There is something more than this, however, which is in- 
dicated with reference to the procedure of the intellect in all 
its attempts to acquire a knowledge of things. This is a cer- 
tain obligation to orderliness. One hears much well-deserved 
criticism of the average knower, because his thoughts are not 
clear, his observations are not accurate and complete; and 
the objects about which he speaks seem somehow to com- 
bine characteristics which science knows are either relatively 
incompatible or absolutely contradictory; — in a word, his 
mind is much of the time a hurly-burly, a "blooming 
confusion." With such a mind, stubborn prejudices, wild con- 
jectures, intolerable superstitions, hideous beliefs, are affirmed 
with all the confidence and apparent sincerity which should 
characterize only the most well-established of cognitive judg- 



106 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ments. With such a mind, it is often difficult to say whether 
there really is any definite conscious perception or concep- 
tion answering to the subject-A; or any distinctly recognized 
similarity, or difference, or relation, corresponding to that 
which is seemingly affirmed or denied by the predicate-A. 
In what respect can such a mind be said to be ruled by the 
principle of identity and non-contradiction, in any strict and 
intelligible way? In answer to this question it must be re- 
plied that all the judgments of such a mind imply some sort 
of a successful attempt by the human intellect to bring order 
into what, if not thus intellectualized, would be an unorganized 
mass of experience; — would, the rather, be inconceivable chaos, 
and not experience at all. Insight into the nature of this or- 
dering process of thought as it enters into all knowledge, 
is not afforded, however, by construing further the principle 
of identity. Such insight requires a criticism of the categories, 
or fundamental forms of that " ordering " of experience which 
knowledge involves; and which knowledge implies as belong- 
ing also to the reality of things. But this implied correspond- 
ence of those forms of human thought which are in control 
of the growth of knowledge to the forms of reality, is a meta- 
physical assumption and not a logical formula. 

No one will be satisfied that the entire meaning of what is 
implied in the principle of identity and non-contradiction has 
been explained by saying what has already been said. Surely, 
something is permanent; all does not change; or at least, 
there is something which limits the change. Even the ex- 
periences which both assume and discover that the changes 
assigned to any subjecWL, generally if not universally, follow 
some sort of order in respect of the character of these changes, 
imply as much. "As a rule" A goes through the changes 

A 1 , A 2 , A 3 , A n ; but does not change over into the series 

B 1 , B 2 , J5 S , 5 n ; and B has equal respect for its own 

character and for the character peculiar to A. On this as- 
sumption, which both underlies and is confirmed by all ex- 



PRINCIPLES AND PRESUPPOSITIONS 107 

perience, the various particular sciences proceed to develope 
themselves and so to increase the world's stock of knowledge. 
In this assumption, however, we find two conceptions of a 
highly metaphysical character. They are the conceptions of Law 
and of Being, or Substance — the ontological and not merely 
grammatical or logical subject of changing predicates. Thus 
the standard which the so-called principle of identity sets up 
for the cognitive judgment may be expressed in some such 
terms as the following: The motive and the goal (the compel- 
ling law of its life) of the cognitive judgment is to connect to- 
gether in the terms of judgment what has been cognized as 
being objectively, or really, connected together. For the in- 
tellect of man is not puttering with its own sensuous impres- 
sions, ideas, and conceptions, in the effort to get them into 
an aesthetically pleasing logical form; it is trying, with much 
courage and hope, and with more or less of commendable and 
trustworthy result, to know things as they really are. 

Where this so strange and evanescent notion of identity 
comes from, we do not have long or far to seek, when once 
we have taken the psychological point of view. As will ap- 
pear later on, it comes from our experience with ourselves. 
But even at present it would seem to be reasonably clear that 
so much of identity as it attributes to things implies thus much 
of identity which it knows itself to have: The Self is a self- 
conscious life conformable to law, and maintaining its so-called 
identity by this conformity. With regard to the Being of 
the World, it will appear that modern science agrees with the 
thought of the ancient saying, however crudely expressed, of 
Chwang-Tsze : — 

"The Tao is always One, and yet it requires change." 

The Principle of Sufficient Reason, when we come to ques- 
tion its real meaning for the guaranty and the growth of 
knowledge, is scarcely less vague and troublesome to under- 
stand than is the principle of identity. What do we mean by 



108 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

" reason " in this connection ? And how shall we define " suf- 
ficient/ 5 or know what is really a sufficient reason in any 
particular case? The verbal and symbolical terms which for- 
mal logic has employed for the expression of its truths seem 
to throw little or no clear light upon the actual processes of 
the human mind in the growth of knowledge. For this " suffi- 
cient" cause, the modern interest in truth has turned almost 
wholly away from discussions and treatises of formal logic 
to concrete inquiries as to the methods which the particular 
sciences actually find successful in increasing the body of their 
accepted formulas. And, indeed, we almost never in real life 
argue our way to truth, about ourselves or about things, along 
the path marked out by any of the forms of the syllogism. We 
read, and learn the truths which the race has come to accept 
as the result of centuries of experience. We listen, or ob- 
serve, or think, — always fitfully and with wandering atten- 
tion and in random fashion; — and then all at once truths 
come flashing in upon, or slowly welling up from the depths 
before, the conscious mind. Arguing in terms of the syllo- 
gism is for the testing of judgments, for the confirmation of 
truth and the confutation of error. Even when thus employed, 
whether in scientific assembles or legislative halls, whether in 
study, shop, or mart, argument convinces, if at all, chiefly by 
its offer of hitherto unknown facts, or by its suggestion of new 
points of view from which to reconsider the bearing of facts 
quite well known before. To say this is not to deny the 
work of intellect in the cognition of truth, or the part which 
inference plays in the establishment and growth of knowledge. 
It is simply to reaffirm the conviction that all abstract 
formulas quite completely fail to set before our eyes the com- 
plexity and subtlety of the actual life of knowledge. 

The fact which underlies the statement of the principle of 
sufficient reason is plain. By steps, which we call reasoning 
and ascribe chiefly to intellect, starting from known facts of 
self-consciousness and sense-perception, we do reach hitherto un- 



PRINCIPLES AND PRESUPPOSITIONS 109 

known truths of a more or less general application. In all 
the earlier developments of mental life the procedure shares 
little or none at all, in the characteristics of a truly logical 
process. There is little or no consciousness answering to the 
words " therefore " or " because." Accordingly, the growth of 
knowledge at this stage is not correctly expressed by the con- 
sciousness that A is C because A is B and B is C, In the 
stream of consciousness I find A is judged to be B; and then 
(meaning by this no recognized causal connection but only a 
fact of sequence in the next moment of consciousness) I find, 
for an unrecognized reason, that A is judged to be C. It is fre- 
quent repetition of these connected facts in experience which 
" rubs in/' so to say, and establishes a mental connection 
between the ideas of, or thoughts about, the things experienced. 
As experience developes and becomes more complicated, two 
results take place with regard to the connections in conscious- 
ness between the cognitive judgments. On the one hand, the 
judgments themselves become more complicated in character 
and in their tendency to run in a variety of directions: The 
A, which was simply, or chiefly B, and the B which was sim- 
ply or chiefly C, are now known to be also D. E. F N; 

either judgment (A is B or B is C) may, therefore, be followed 
in consciousness by any one of several judgments connecting it 

with D. E. F N. The practical interests to be served will 

determine which one of these many judgments, it shall be. 
Indeed, in most of what is called " thinking " among human 
beings, and probably in all of what we call by the same term, 
in the case of the lower animals, the leap from judgment to 
judgment is as unreflective, as little truly logical in the higher 
meaning of this word, as is the leap to the single judgment 
which affirms a state of the self, or a quality of some thing. 
On the other hand, however, with the growth of variableness 
and heterogeneity among the judgments, there is also the more 
important development of uniformity and orderliness. Nature 
compels us to make fixed connections between our judgments; 



110 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

and the intellect, at first chiefly in the interest of purely prac- 
tical considerations, cheerfully responds. Our pains and pleas- 
ures, our gratified desires or disappointments, excite us to ob- 
serve what things and what events are connected in reality; 
and those which are, either for our weal or our woe, actually 
connected become connected in our thought. With the child, 
it is relations between his bodily organs, in their uses, and 
between them and the things of his environment' — his food, 
drink, toys, tools, etc. — which are earliest and most firmly 
bound together in judgment. With this increasing experience 
of uniformity, the fixing and deepening of expectation goes 
along. To this expectation, there are, to be sure, many sur- 
prises and disappointments, not only for the child but also 
for the adult; not only for the plain man's consciousness, 
with its more purely practical ends in view, but also for the 
scientific expert. But on the whole, the false expectations get 
corrected by experience; the correct expectations become con- 
firmed; and thus the development of cognitive judgments and 
the growth of knowledge, in the individual and in the race, 
takes place. 

If this were all of human thinking, the conclusions of the 
schools which resolve the principle of sufficient reason, and 
its correlate in reality, the principle of causation, into the 
flow of sensations and ideas, accompanied by feelings of ex- 
pectation, along the channels worn by custom, would be ade- 
quate to explain the contribution of intellect to knowledge. 
But this is not all. At some time in the mental develop- 
ment — and doubtless, earlier in some cases than in others — 
the demand for an explanation of its own experience is made 
by the human Self. We wish to know, not simply that, in fact, 
our experiences are more or less uniformly connected in time, 
but rather the " real " explanation why they are thus connected. 
This demand for a real explanation is of the very essence 
of the life of man's intellect. It is intellectual curiosity, 
in the stricter and more appropriate meaning of this term. 



PRINCIPLES AND PRESUPPOSITIONS 111 

Curious, indeed, are the higher animals, and prompted b} T this 
curiosity to a certain sort of investigation. The dog desires 
to know, whether this strange-looking object is good for food, 
or not; where the game he has been chasing has gone; how to 
open the gate through which his master has disappeared. 
Within certain rather indefinite limits, the animal will ex- 
periment and pass from judgment to judgment by mental proc- 
esses which simulate the human forms of thinking, in its 
desire to attain certain practical ends. But that the animals, 
even the most intelligent of them, ever desire explanation 
for its own sake, — i. e., for the satisfaction which it affords 
the intellectual nature, there is no adequate proof. Neither 
do they give evidence of an effort to ground this explanation 
in the causal relations of real beings. Man's curiosity, how- 
ever, is intellectual; by thinking, he wills to find out the ex- 
planation in reality of his subjective states. Thus is the " prin- 
ciple of reason " discoverable in the character of the motif 
which induces and guides so much of the development of 
knowledge in the individual and in the race. 

Little experience is needed under the influence of this mo- 
tive of intellectual curiosity to discover that the real, and 
really most important explanations of many things, and many 
events, do not appear to the senses or to thought as in imme- 
diate and obvious connection with the things and the events 
themselves. The reason for the bird which I see now as a 
robin in the tree, being a robin rather than a thrush, is not 
to be found in the fact that it is the same bird which I saw 
a moment before in the bush. The reason for the being of 
the robin was in the character of the egg from which the bird 
was hatched, or in the characters of the parent birds from 
which the egg sprung. The reason why my tooth aches now 
is not simply the fact that it ached five minutes ago, but 
"something is the matter/' as we confidently say, with that 
tooth. Thus, although we are always compelled, however ab- 
stractly we may argue about the relation of cause and 



112 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

effect as timeless, to regard the effect as following the cause 
in time, mere sequence in time, even when it seems most 
immediate and obvious, does not of itself satisfactorily explain 
the connection in reality of our subjective states of knowl- 
edge. There is, then, a relation here which thought needs 
to recognize and to comprehend that is other than the rela- 
tion of sequence in time. 

As the growth of that form of knowledge which we assign 
to the particular sciences takes place, the connections which 
we feel the need of making in order to satisfy the demands 
of the intellect for the explanation of all experience, become 
infinitely complicated, subtle, swiftly changing or eternally 
existing; they become further removed from the senses and 
more imperative and arduous in their demands upon the im- 
agination. Classes of things, and laws to rule over them, are 
thought to be established; in this way, for the moment, the 
reasons for the being of the things and for their uniform 
modes of action and reaction, seem simpler and more easy to 
be grasped. But the reasons for the existence of any par- 
ticular thing being just what it is, being that and no other 
thing, are indefinitely multiplied by the discoveries of science. 
No law accounts for the definite concrete behavior of any 
Self, or any Thing: neither is the so-called law a real ex- 
planation; it is only the formula which symbolizes more or 
less accurately one of the myriad aspects of the behavior of 
an indefinite number of things, when these things are under 
certain more or less definitely fixed relations to one another. 
But every Thing, at every moment of its existence, and in 
respect of every one of its actual changes or forms of behavior, 
is obeying scores of different so-called laws, and is manifest- 
ing scores of its indefinite, and largely unknown, number of 
qualities and properties. This infinity of properties and pos- 
sible relations, all of which must be regarded as knowable, 
not in their abstract form, but in their precise combination as 
applied here and now to this one thing, constitutes the com- 



PRINCIPLES AND PRESUPPOSITIONS 113 

plete explanation which the intellect seeks as its ideal. This, 
if found out, as it never can be by the finite mind, would be 
the only quite "sufficient reason" for the particular thing, 
or the particular event. 

How is it — we must still further ask ourselves — that one 
thing can explain another thing, or one event explain another 
event? By processes of thought, the intellect connects them 
together in a way which gives it satisfaction. We find ** the 
reason," as we fondly say, and we feel gratified. Nor is this 
gratification due wholly to the fact that we may now know 
how more safely and effectively to use the particular thing; 
to procure, or to meet the coming of the particular event. 
Quite irrespective of selfish interests, or practical concern- 
ment, the mind of man is satisfied with having answered the 
question, Why? There is, therefore, another still more 
deeply lying question in which the philosophy of knowledge 
takes its chief interest while subjecting to its criticism the 
so-called principle of sufficient reason. This problem may be 
at least proposed, if not solved, in the following way. 

What men eagerly seek for by examining experience in the 
interests of its explanation, is not the bare satisfaction of 
the intellect in seeming to attain what it is impelled to seek. 
It is not reasons for their own sake which thinking tries to 
devise. It is truth of reality which thought endeavors to 
find. To give reasons, which seem plausible, but which start 
from the mist and end in the darkness of invisible space, is 
sorry work. By thought, let us get at reality; and to do 
this the connections which thinking establishes between judg- 
ments must correspond to the connections which in reality 
exist between things. Logic, for its own sake, is poor stuff. 
Beflective thinking, which leads from observed fact to the 
truths of nature's existences and processes, and to the truths of 
human life, and of the relations between the two — this it is 
which men prize and try ever more and more to attain. 

Kant confesses that it was Hume's sceptical analysis of the 



114 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

idea of causality which aroused him from his "dogmatic 
slumber" and stimulated him to the task of criticizing more 
thoroughly the principles of human cognitive faculty. For 
Hume had found in this idea only the subjective fact of a 
series of sensations, or mental images, bound together by cus- 
tom, and arousing expectations of future similar series, a3 
matters of course. But such an explanation did not account, 
in the opinion of Kant, for the " objective" character of 
the idea. It was plain, he held, that the very nature of the con- 
nection subsumed under the titles, " cause and effect," was 
not to be regarded as obtaining in the ideas of the subject 
only; the connection, on the contrary, was affirmed, or rather 
known, as existing and operating between the objects them- 
selves. And now since, according to Kant, the very constitu- 
tion of the object is imparted to it by the constitutional activi- 
ties of the intellect, — that is, mind makes its own objects 
according to mind's own nature, and what we call Nature in 
the large is the work of human nature; — we must find in this 
same intellect which attributes the causal connection to ob- 
jects, the law that will account for the attribution itself. 
The problem then becomes: What is there in this particular 
form of sequence in time which makes it worthy to be con- 
sidered as "objective"; that is, as a relation of causality 
between objects? Kant answers the problem as follows: The 
explanation of the causal connection attributed to objects is 
to be found in the fact of the sequence of objects according to 
a fixed rule. 

This answer of the Kantian criticism, however, goes but little 
farther towards explaining our confidence that the relations 
which we establish by thinking between our judgments, repre- 
sent relations really existing between things, than did the sen- 
sationalism of Hume. The principle of causality, as actually 
effective in a real world, cannot be substituted for the sub- 
jective principle of sufficient reason, in this off-hand fashion. 
Let us go, then, once more to the facts of experience. These 



PRINCIPLES AND PRESUPPOSITIONS 115 

can be expressed only by admitting a new class of terms. We 
believe that we ourselves, and all the various other selves, and 
other things, stand together in one world on terms of action 
and reaction. This belief may be expressed in various ways. 
It may take the form of a doctrine of the transmission of 
energy, of power to do work, of energy kinetic and energy 
stored, or energy of position. We may drop this technical 
language of science, as we all, even including the men of 
science themselves, ordinarily do : and then we may speak of 
things and selves as influencing one another; or of their 
doing something to one another: or of their making 
one another do this or do that. Unless, however, we speak 
in some such way, we cannot even hint at what human experi- 
ence really is, to say nothing of clearly and forcibly expressing 
its essential meaning. Yet in all this manner of speaking, 
elements are freely introduced which the objective sense-im- 
pressions do not supply. No one ever saw, heard, smelled, or 
tasted any energy, whether kinetic or stored. Things are seen 
to change their shapes, their positions in space, their spatial 
relations to other things. These changes in different things 
are sometimes simultaneous, sometimes in more or less definite 
sequence, sometimes apparently far separated both in space 
and in time. But the mysterious passing of influence, the com- 
pulsion of one thing as exercised over another, and as suffered 
by that other, nowhere sensibly appears. 

To ascertain more completely what there is in this sort of 
experience, let us take an example or two. Here are the 
different parts of a building which are to be considered in 
their objective relations to one another. In time and space I 
may arrange my perception and thought of them at will. 
From top to bottom, from right to left, or in the reverse di- 
rections, I may run my eye over its different portions from 
A, B, C, and D to X; or from N through D, C, B to A; or 
skipping from D to A and back again to C or N. And I may 
be a longer and a shorter time about it, at my will. But I 



116 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

know that in the same time all these different portions of the 
building actually stand together, each in a different space 
and in fixed spatial relations to one another; and all this 
knowledge of the object implies the object's independence 
of my will. This arrangement of the parts is fixed accord- 
ing to the nature of the object, and not according to my sub- 
jective procedure in knowing or thinking the object. I may 
further direct my attention to more invisible, but not less 
important relations between the various parts of this same 
object. From below upward, A is " sustaining " B, B is sus- 
taining C, and so on to N; and from above downward, N is 
" pressing " upon the part below it, and all above is pressing 
upon D, and D on C, and so on down to A. Or sideways, B 
is "binding" A to 0, and is itself "separated" from D by 
C; and so on to N. What now would be expected in case there 
should be developed any great efficiency in the power of im- 
portant portions of this same building to " sustain pressure," 
to " bind together," and to " keep asunder " ? Experience 
allows no uncertain answer to such a question as this. The 
solution of such a problem is not dependent on human senses 
or on the laws of the human intellect. Nature spells " ruin " 
as the answer. 

When we ask after the source from which, ever fresh and 
inexhaustible, comes our knowledge of things as causally re- 
lated, we need not go far astray. The explanation has been 
suggested, if not given with sufficient fullness, in the previous 
analysis of the nature and origin of all human cognitive 
activity. It is the experience with ourselves as causes; it is 
the knowledge of ourselves as agent's with feeling-full and 
purposeful activities, more or less effective, more or less re- 
sisted and ineffectual, in all our daily commerce with other 
selves and other things. And just as we should never seek 
any explanation of such experiences and never find it by 
weaving together judgments in trains of reasoning, without 
intellectual curiosity; so we should never give reality and life 



PRINCIPLES AND PRESUPPOSITIONS 117 

to the explanation without the consciousness of an activity 
belonging to the nature of the Self as a will, that is limited 
by other self-active wills. 

Physicists and psychologists both know perfectly well what 
men really mean when they naively and without prejudice talk 
of causes and effects. All men think of things as, each one, 
doing something to some other, and as having something done 
to them. Less popularly expressed, everybody believes, and 
must believe, that both things and selves are real; that both 
things and selves are, in varying degrees, both active and 
passive; and that both have the forms and precise terms of 
their activity and passivity, conditioned in a limited way upon 
the activity and passivity of other selves and things. The 
"laws" which science discovers and announces are nothing 
but the known or conjectured, more or less uniform, modes 
of the behavior of selves and things in their changing rela- 
tions to one another. All this is, of course, anthropomorphic; 
if by being anthropomorphic we mean knowing realities, 
or thinking about them, as only man can know and think 
about anything at all. Nor is it simply anthropomorphic, as 
a purely intellectual human form of knowing and thinking; 
it is also anthropopathic. It is explanation made blood-warm 
and effective with feeling, often rising to the intensity of pas- 
sionate effort and passionate suffering. But such factors de- 
rived from the experiences of a feeling and voluntary Self 
are as necessary to knowing what we men really are, and 
what the world of our environment really is, as are the ratio- 
cinations of that mythical " pure intellect," to which some 
would bow down in a cold and unmeaning act of worship. 
Any attempt in the name of science to purify the causal con- 
ception of the elements contributed by emotion and will does 
not in the least help science to clear itself of the charge of 
either anthropomorphism or anthropopathism. On the con- 
trary, it reduces explanation to a lifeless body of abstractions 
and empty formulas which give no real account of anything; 



118 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

— least of all, of the reasoning processes from which the ab- 
stractions and formulas come. 

What the principle of sufficient reason means, then, for 
man's knowledge of the real world is this. Its Nature is 
known, and every being and event in It is known, and known 
only in terms of doing and suffering, or having something 
done to it. So far as we know these terms, we know the " na- 
ture " of any being, or the " causes " of any event. Its known 
or conjectured modes of behavior, under known or conjectured 
relations, are at any moment in the growth of knowledge, the 
practically " sufficient reason " with which to satisfy the in- 
tellect's demand for explanation. But the real reason is never 
sufficient, and intellectual curiosity is therefore never wholly 
quenched. Quite sufficient reasons are known to God alone; 
and He does not get at them by slow and doubtful ratiocina- 
tive processes, or other human means of calculation. 

The fuller meaning of this instinctive or rationalized meta- 
physics will become apparent when we come to treat in subse- 
quent chapters of metaphysics in general, and of the Philos- 
ophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Man. It is enough at 
present to state the conclusion which must be incorporated 
into our theory of knowledge. He who rejects the validity of 
the knowledge of the real world of selves and things, which 
comes to him only on these terms, rejects the validity of human 
knowledge altogether. And the absurdity of the position in 
which the intellect thus becomes involved will soon appear. 
Both the logical principle of Identity and that of Sufficient 
Eeason show man's confidence that his own essential being as 
will, and his own experienced relations as an active and suffer- 
ing agent, afford the type according to which he may rationally 
judge the essential nature and real relations of all other beings 
in the one World. Causality itself is no invincible bond that, 
as it were from the outside, seizes hold upon things and forces 
them into a kind of unity. Neither is it necessary to get 
beyond our daily experience in order to realize the nature 



PRINCIPLES AND PRESUPPOSITIONS 119 

of that causal nexus, in the confidence of which all our reason- 
ing about things continually proceeds. When analyzed and 
criticized, this nexus appears not so much like the external 
and merely visible connections of a machine, as these lay them- 
selves bare before the eye of sense. It is the rather like the 
interiorly recognized and felt connections of a conscious and 
purposeful Self. 

Besides those logical principles, or rules of the behavior of 
intellect in all the growth of knowledge, which have already 
been discussed, there are certain hidden and yet more funda- 
mental presuppositions, or implicates. What does any man take 
for granted, whenever he claims to know, or know the truth 
about, himself, or other selves, or other things? When ques- 
tioned in this way, the answer should doubtless be : It is taken 
for granted that there is some evidence, or proof for that 
which is affirmed to be known. But neither question nor 
answer reach down deep enough to serve the present purpose. 
How uncertain, rambling, and constantly changing, are 
human ideas as to what is evidence and proof ! The " suffi- 
cient " of to-day, is insufficient to-morrow. The accepted 
science of one age is the resisted superstition of another. 
There are accepted facts of physics at the present hour, the 
bare announcement of which a few decades ago — for example, 
electrons, ions, Roentgen and X-rays, etc. — would have gained 
for anyone the title of lunatic or liar. On the contrary, there 
are multitudes of commonly accepted judgments of the past 
that would have hard work indeed even to gain a hearing for 
their alleged proofs at the present time. And in all ages, they 
who will not listen to Moses and the Prophets will not be- 
lieve though one should rise from the dead to assure them. 
All this is rebuke to dogmatism, food for scepticism, urgent 
call for criticism. But it has absolutely no influence upon 
those assumptions which are made alike by dogmatist, sceptic, 
and critic; or upon those implicates in which all three of these 
attitudes toward evidence find themselves inextricably in- 



120 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

volved. For this kind of presuppositions underlies doubt and 
negation, as truly and as surely as it affords foundations for 
believing and affirming. 

Since the presuppositions of this character exist, for the 
most part, in the form of beliefs, and since all such beliefs 
are chiefly matters of feeling, they are not brought into clear 
consciousness by all our ordinary acts of knowing; neither is 
their significance clearly reflected from the customary proced- 
ure of the sciences in their attempts at the growth of human 
knowledge. Philosophy can do little more with them than 
just to mention them. For that manner of reflective thinking 
which calls itself philosophy, even in its most sceptical or 
agnostic form, is as dependent upon the validity of these as- 
sumptions as is the most abundantly certified form of either 
ordinary or scientific knowledge. 

The attempt to state precisely what are these invincible be- 
liefs, these unquestioned implicates, of all human knowledge, is 
accompanied by peculiar difficulties. To a certain extent, all 
thinkers must be the advocates of a so-called " faith-philos- 
ophy." Eeasoning about reasoning itself comes to an end 
somewhere. Proof that proof is possible, or — much more — 
that proof is impossible, takes for granted what cannot be 
proved. Any strict and mutually exclusive separation between 
faith and knowledge, even in the form in which it was at- 
tempted by the Kantian criticism, must somewhere base itself 
upon foundations where both faith and knowledge are ele- 
ments lying together in a kind of reinforced cement. Yet we 
are not unmindful of the sarcasm which made Schopenhauer 
speak of Jacobi, the champion of a " faith-philosophy," as one 
" who only has the trifling weakness that he takes all he learned 
and approved before his fifteenth year for inborn ideas of the 
human mind." We are even the more warned against this 
" trifling weakness " by the fact that the physical sciences are 
now setting up some of their most recent, and as yet even 
doubtful discoveries, as a priori truths, " innate ideas " inevi- 



PRINCIPLES AND PRESUPPOSITIONS 121 

tably attaching to " Nature " (when writ large with, a capital) 
by every sane and rational mind. Let us be modest and 
cautious, then, in the attempt to discover those primary be- 
liefs which underlie, and interpenetrate, and both limit and 
guarantee, all the growth of human knowledge. 

And, first, there exists a certain wonderful ajnd almost 
audacious confidence of human reason in itself. The times in 
which this confidence has been misplaced, and its rights re- 
futed, are already infinite in number. Common folk are al- 
ways going wrong, — and not least of all in respect to their 
judgments about things where they think their knowledge is 
most trustworthy and complete. Even the particular sciences 
advance chiefly through correcting their past errors and inac- 
curacies. While in respect of those most important truths of 
ethics, aesthetics, and religion, by which men live and die 
most worthily, it often seems as though the entire history of 
the human race were one long record of misconceptions, blun- 
ders, whims, and injurious mistakes. Yet as often as human 
reason is confounded, and stumbles, and falls, she never lies 
prone and despairing. She always rises to her feet, and goes 
on her way with renewed determination: and generally with 
renewed confidence as well. With the maturing of experience 
— an experience so largely of failure and mistake — she has a 
yet greater, though chastened, belief in the possibility of a 
triumphant result. In the individual and in the race, cre- 
dulity may decrease while wisdom grows. But what is most 
important is this : the conditions, limits, tests, and guaranties 
of knowledge become better known through the very failures 
themselves. And this kind of knowledge is the best endorse- 
ment of the faith of reason in itself. To say that the mature 
mind does not any more surely know, and widely know, than 
the mind of the child, is to speak foolishly. To say that 
the race, as represented by the most highly developed centers 
of scientific, artistic, and moral culture, knows no more about 
the world of men and of things, than did the more primitive 



122 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

men of thousands of years gone by, is to speak even more 
foolishly. Nor can we limit this growth of knowledge to 
sensible matters alone. Thus the experiences of history con- 
firm and strengthen that confidence of reason which, in the 
form of an innate belief, belongs to the very nature of man's 
cognitive powers. 

This presupposition of all knowledge, in the form of belief, 
is not, however, a purely subjective affair. It does not ap- 
pear in the character of an illusion; it is not like the belief in 
fairies or ghosts. It includes presuppositions which have an 
irresistible reference to the character of the object of knowl- 
edge; it is fraught with ontological implicates. The knower 
believes in the actuality of the event which he knows, in the 
reality of the object of his cognition. This belief is immediate 
and irresistible. Its truthfulness is the presupposition, the 
implicate of a reality, which is essential to the very nature of 
knowledge. Some actual happening, either within myself or 
to myself, as caused by something, or between some things or 
selves other than me, is presupposed in all knowledge. Some 
real being — if not myself alone, then also some other selves, 
or other things — is implied in the objective reference of all 
knowledge. I may sense the event imperfectly, and describe 
it inaccurately; but something happens in reality to some real 
being, every time an act of knowing takes place in my con- 
sciousness. Call it for the present X, an unknown quantity, 
if you will. It belongs to science and philosophy to explicate 
this X. But the belief in X is an ever-present, however silent, 
presupposition of all human knowledge. 

It is plain, then, that when any critical theory of knowledge 
pretends to have told the whole truth of the experience of 
knowledge by saying, " All objective cognition has its source 
in our mental representations/' or again : " All objective cog- 
nition consists of our mental representations," — it may prove 
false, in an important way, to the fundamental and invincible 
faith of reason. This faith rejects the analysis which resolves 



PRINCIPLES AND PRESUPPOSITIONS 123 

the presence of X into a mere mental image, or into an ab- 
straction, or into a dialectical process striking against a limit, 
like the nose of a blind fish running itself against the bank in 
a pool of muddy water. This invincible faith of reason, on 
the contrary, recognizes a reality, of the Self and of that 
which is not-Self, in that experience which is given, when- 
ever the life of consciousness takes the form of a completed 
act of knowledge. 

Objections may indeed be raised against speaking of the 
form which the ontological implicate of all knowledge takes, as 
a " belief " ; and if by the word " belief " we mean any mental 
attitude resembling that with which he holds to certain opin- 
ions, about the truth of which he is doubtful for lack of evi- 
dence, the word is not fitly employed with reference to man's 
confidence in the reality of the objects of his knowledge. 
Psychologists have long differed as to what term should be 
employed to represent the nature of this confidence and the way 
in which it is derived. Of all these theories, that is most repre- 
hensible and promptly to be rejected which would convert the 
faith into a sort of inference, based upon the mediation of an 
idea. According to this theory, the intellect argues its way to 
reality as something, so to speak, back of the screen on which 
the ideas are thrown by a camera of unknown construction 
situated back of another screen. Upon this view, that of 
Schopenhauer is a manifest improvement. According to Scho- 
penhauer, the intellect proceeds upon the a priori principle of 
sufficient reason to a kind of envisagement, or seizure, of the 
concrete reality in the act of perception. But this philosopher 
then proceeds so to expound the whole work of intellect as 
illusory with regard to the nature of reality, as to undermine 
his own position. Other modern psychologists have done bet- 
ter; they have agreed rather with the thought of Augustine, 
the early Church Fathers, and the ecclesiastical writers of the 
Middle Ages. In their view, the ontological implicate of all 
knowledge is an act of faith, or rational belief. If, however, 



124 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

we use this term, we must not' think of knowledge as made up 
of separate elements, some of which can be abstracted and yet 
leave the essential nature of knowledge unchanged. In the 
growth of knowledge, inference proceeds with reason's faith 
in itself and also with its faith in the reality of the object of 
knowledge; but the faith is never a matter of blind feeling, 
any more than it is a matter of pure inference from sensuous 
impressions. The very essence of knowledge, in its existence 
and in its growth, requires the exercise, in a living unity, of 
all the so-called faculties of the knowing Self. Or, to invert the 
statement and make it more technical: The entire complex 
condition of the Self, in the act of cognition, involves and 
guarantees the reality of the Self's object of cognition. 

One other important truth emerges clear and consistent 
from an analysis of the principles and presuppositions of all 
knowledge. All communication of facts of experience from one 
mind to another, all that imparting of the information and 
discoveries about things and selves, in which the growth of 
science consists, implies an ontological conviction which is com- 
mon to the race. Other selves have experiences, and reason 
from these experiences to general truths about nature and man, 
in the undoubted belief that the active, living logic of human 
thought is adequate to the true representation of the reality 
of things. For science is not your individual opinion, or mine, 
or that of any other individual. In its most assured form it 
consists of those organized and systematized judgments which 
best represent the experience of the race. And the underlying 
presupposition, the ontological implication, which makes this 
racial growth of knowledge possible, is a world of selves and 
things, e^ra-mentally correspondent to the thoughts about 
these selves and things, which have somehow become accepted 
by the race. 



CHAPTER VII 

SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 

The three words which form the heading of this chapter 
indicate attitudes of mind which must at different times char- 
acterize the growth of knowledge in every individual and in 
the entire race. It is true that there are persons, who, either 
from temperament, or from the effects of education, or both, 
are more sceptically inclined than are the majority of their 
fellows. Oftener than otherwise this inclination is especially 
emphatic as a reaction or recoil from some extreme of dogmat- 
ism. Thus at the same time, and in the same community, 
pronounced dogmatists and pronounced sceptics are likely to be 
living side by side. There are epochs in human development 
when, especially in the field of moral and religious conceptions 
and truths, an unusual proportion of avowed agnostics are to 
be found. And yet, we repeat, every man must be at all times 
dogmatic in making some judgments, sceptical about others, 
and agnostic with reference to most of the opinions which 
constitute his daily mental environment. Euin would quickly 
follow for any man who attempted to be either an unques- 
tioning dogmatist, a thorough-going sceptic, or an invincible 
agnostic, at all times, and toward every alleged fact, generaliza- 
tion, or law, belonging to the organized body of human knowl- 
edge. 

It is scarcely necessary for the student of psychology, or 
indeed for any person of intelligence and common-sense, to 
prove at length how man's knowledge grows in dependence upon 
doubt and upon the further inquiry which doubt suggests and 
commands. The demand for doubt exists, not only in the in- 
terests of knowledge for its own sake, but also in the interest 
of obtaining the good things of life, and even of preserving 

125 



126 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

life itself. The infant who does not early learn to be sceptical 
as to whether things really are, what at first they seem to 
be, is doomed to a wretched and unsuccessful life. He is, and 
without the awakening shock of doubt, he remains, an idiot. 
Intellectual curiosity, the spirit and the practice of the hunt 
for truth that has practical results, as well as for the truths 
of science, go hand in hand with doubt. Indeed, as to the part 
which scepticism plays in the development of the particular 
sciences, we may say that distrust of the first and more 
obvious testimony of the senses, and doubt as to what are the 
real facts underlying the illusion and affording its explana- 
tion, are absolutely indispensable to the first steps in this de- 
velopment. Thus psychology, psycho-physics, and physics, all 
unite in attacking the common-sense view of the testimony of 
the senses as to what things really are. And the realities with 
which they, by processes of criticism, underlay and explain 
these illusions of sense, are products of an imagination so 
subtle, refined, and difficult, for the ordinary and even for the 
trained scientific mind, that the conclusions reached, however 
dogmatically affirmed, may have to remain subjects of a scep- 
ticism more thorough than that with which the processes be- 
gan. But knowledge grows in this way; and knowledge can 
grow in no other way. 

"It is man's privilege to doubt:" 

But only 

"If so be that from doubt at length, 
Truth may stand forth unmoved of change." 

This legitimate and indispensable scepticism of which we 
have been speaking has its rightful issue in a process of criti- 
cism. If it may be called man's privilege to doubt, it must 
be called man's duty to criticize. To criticize is but to use 
one's judgment; and to criticize, most originally and signifi- 
cantly, means to inquire, to search into and to distinguish be- 
tween good and bad (xpivw, I judge). Without the ceaseless 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 127 

and strenuous use of critical judgment, knowledge cannot grow; 
without distinguishing between good and bad, from the evi- 
dential point of view, convictions as to truth and realit} r can- 
not be reasonably sustained. Thus, there is profound philo- 
sophical truth in calling the man who does not use judgment 
in practical matters, lacking in " common " sense ; he is defi- 
cient in that kind of critical faculty which obligates a man to 
distinguish between the good and the bad, the well adapted 
and the unfit for the uses of his daily life. So, also, he who 
lacks critical judgment in matters of science, art, morals, or 
religion, is said to have no " sense " about such matters — no 
such sense as is rightly expected of a man. To utter quite 
completely uncritical judgments about anything is to "talk 
nonsense." He who is not a critic, in respect of all the more 
important judgments for living well, or for success in his 
particular pursuit or profession, is less than a man ought to 
become. 

Of course, however, since different judgments are supported 
by immensely different amounts, and widely differing kinds, 
of evidence; and since the evidence on which many judgments 
must be made up is very frequently confused and not rarely 
conflicting; agnosticism, or an avowal of inability to pro- 
nounce a cognitive judgment, is the inevitable and rational 
result. If he who has none of those affirmative judgments 
which constitute a fairly compact body of accepted truths, is 
a fool for lack of judgment; he who is not agnostic about in- 
numerable matters is a fool for rashness of judgment. On the 
vast majority of alleged truths which concern the conduct of 
our daily lives, or the interests of science, art, morals, and re- 
ligion, the agnostic judgment is the only true judgment. And 
he who refuses to say, " I do not know " is convicted of being 
either self-deceived or a liar. 

All the foregoing statements, however valid from the point 
of view of logic and of the practical life, do not solve the prob- 
lems which arise in the very midst of a philosophical theory 



128 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

of knowledge and which attach themselves to snch terms as 
philosophical criticism, scepticism, and agnosticism. This 
theory proposes to itself two important questions with regard 
to all these attitudes of mind toward truth. The first is this: 
"What are the limits, if any, to the sceptical, critical, and 
agnostic judgments? And, second: Which of these attitudes, 
if either, must be held toward the principles and presupposi- 
tions of all knowledge ? " 

With regard to the limits of scepticism, they may be reached 
in either one of several different ways. In many cases they 
are reached, whether with a complete logical satisfaction, or 
not, through the pressure of practical interests and of 
practical necessities. All life may be conceived of as 
consisting in an endless series of problems. These are pri- 
marily such as, What to eat; What to drink; What to wear; 
How to get where I want to go; How to obtain what I want 
to use or to enjoy. With regard to the solution of most of 
the problems of this class, it is not argument that supplies the 
explanation. About them, if we say, " In the beginning was 
the thought/' and then study " this first line's lesson," and 
ask ourselves : " Is it the thought does all from time's first 
hour ? " our answer at once must be : 

" I dare to read, 
And write: 'In the beginning was the deed.'" 

Small boys cannot be forever sceptical as to which dogs 
will bite, which bright things will burn, what other boys it is 
safe to challenge to combat. Can I walk? It is doubtful; but 
I solve the problem by walking — or I discover I have motor 
paralysis. Can I succeed in this business? It is, indeed, 
doubtful. But I must do something; and I try and succeed, 
or the effort is followed by a lamentable failure. Thus in the 
conduct of the entire life, the mental condition of doubt which 
either does precede, or which might reasonably precede, the 
concrete act, is limited, not by the argumentative solution of 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM. AND CRITICISM 129 

the doubt, but by the results of experience. In a word, the 
doubt for lack of eviden:: as to what will be, is banished by 
the experiment which converts it into a memory of what has 
been. Were not this kind of pressure brought constantly to 
bear upon us all, and were we allowed the right to a " sufficient 



ment of the deeds themselves, we should be most of the time 
like the ass of Buridanus, starving to death between the two 
equally attractive bundles of hay. The necessity of living by 
action is an imperative guardian over the limits of scepticism. 
But experience has also set certain limits to scepticism by 
the abundance of practical rules and groups of more or less 
consciously interconnected and dependent ^"ii^ziexes which it 
has furnished on grounds of evidence long since accepted as 
sufficient. We know that things do work in certain wajs. If 
the average man is asked how he knows it : and knows it sc 
well as habitually to stake life and life's interests upon the 
knowledge, he may be puzzled for the answer. Sceptic, he 
certainly is not, with reference to these items of knowledge. 
But neither is he dogmatical because he has been sufficie^T- y 
critical of them and therefore knows well their grounds. Ie\ 
then, he is Tossed for a "sufficient reasx " with which to 
certify his cognitive judgment, he may begin a vague appeal 
to his conception of nature; or he may quote authority: :: he 
may summon to his help a certain amount of generalized ex- 
perience of his own. Axi if he is farther asked, whether he 
surely knows anything about the future, w he:her in fact 
there can be such an experience for the human mind as knowl- 
edge of the future, he will probably be trapped into sijixr. 
"330." He may theren pon be reminded that there is no 
absolutely sure knowledge about either the past, 01 e~ex the 
present, beyond the immediate consciousness of myself — 
whether for the moment, dogmatist, sceptic, critic, or arx:s- 
tic, it matters not. The logical result of which is rha: into 
the bottomless pit of such scepticism falls all human science, 



130 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

and all the results of the countless centuries of the experience 
of the race. In view of so serious a consequence of carrying 
scepticism to its logical conclusions, any sceptic may find a 
sufficient reason to recover a sane condition of mind. He will 
see that the very demands for evidence, in order to assert 
knowledge, must themselves be reasonable; and that the prin- 
ciple of " sufficient reason," properly interpreted, is a valid 
limit against maintaining the sceptical attitude of mind 
toward many of our judgments. 

If now we ask ourselves how much and what kind of evi- 
dence is necessary in each case to supply a sufficient reason 
for changing the attitude of doubt to an attitude which war- 
rants the affirmation of knowledge, no general answer can 
be given. The more correct answer depends, in each case, upon 
a number of conditions. Of these conditions, the most im- 
portant, perhaps, concern the kind of judgment, or matter 
of reasoning, about which knowledge is sought. For the 
knowledge which the physical sciences have achieved, the 
grounds of evidence are for the most part known only by those 
familiar with the scientific methods of each. The result in 
such cases is the fixing of the limits more carefully in accord- 
ance with the evidence; then follows the accompanying of 
each cognitive judgment with an avowed or silent feeling of 
doubt as to the precise degree of its accuracy. Thus in these 
sciences, hypotheses come to be either rejected or elevated to 
the rank of theories and, finally, to the position of accepted 
laws. But the reasons for the laws are scarcely ever sufficiently 
understood to establish a claim to constitute a part of the 
body of scientific knowledge, properly so-called. Thus the 
fact and law of gravitation are known; but why all masses 
tend to move toward each other as the law surely affirms that 
they do, is a subject about which no tenable hypothesis has 
yet been discovered. The expert in science knows also that 
none of his laws can be affirmed without an allowance, so to 
say, for a certain limit to their accuracy. They are true, — 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 131 

that is, they correspond to the reality; but only within certain 
assignable limits. 

With regard to all this class of cognitive judgments the 
only available course of the average man is to accept them 
on the authority of the consensus of experts; and thus to make 
them a part of that equipment of knowledge which is neces- 
sary for the more successful conduct of life, as well as for 
laying claim to the title, " well-informed/' or " intelligent." 
If he will know as nearly as possible when his sun will rise 
and set to-morrow, he resorts to the almanac or to the columns 
of his daily paper. If the minutes given by his authority do 
not precisely correspond with the evidence of his watch, he 
may suspect the latter of being incorrect. Or he may add 
further to his knowledge by learning that a fraction of a 
degree east or west of the parallel for which the record was 
made, is " bound " to make a difference between his private 
experience and the scientific record. The more he learns 
about the conditions under which these astronomical estimates 
are obtained, about the degree of certainty which attaches to 
them, and about the limits within which errors are possible, 
the more nearly does his knowledge approach that of the man 
of science. With regard to the weather-wise predictions of either 
almanac or newspaper, experience will soon teach him on what 
different foundations of knowledge these guesses are based. 

But both the unscientific man and the man of science may 
be said to know that the sun will rise in the east and not in 
the west, on to-morrow's morning; — the latter, however, much 
more surely than the former, because he also knows why it is 
compelled to rise in just such a place and what an inconceiv- 
able upsetting of the entire universe it would mean to have a 
reversal of the sun's apparent procedure really take place. 
Indeed, with the savage or primitive man, such so-called knowl- 
edge can scarcely be called more than expectation, " rubbed 
in" by accustomed experience. With science, however, the 
knowledge is placed on grounds which afford a quite sufficient 



132 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

reason, since they involve a knowledge of the entire solar 
system, and of considerable parts of the universe beyond. 

Even the man of science, however, cannot fail to see that 
his knowledge thins out, so to say, as the attempt is made to 
stretch it, either forward or backward, over the infinite exten- 
sions of time and space. Did the forces which physics and 
chemistry recognize as the destroyers and rebuilders, in a cease- 
less process of change, of the material world as known ac- 
cording to present experience, combine to work in subjection 
to the same laws of action and reaction, during the myriads 
of centuries gone by? Do these same forces exist and follow 
the same laws in infinite spaces that are as yet concealed 
wholly from human observation, and may be quite beyond the 
powers of human imagination? In answer to such questions, 
science cannot return an affirmative answer with the same 
assurance as that which it accords to the body of its accepted 
truths touching the behavior of things in the world of its 
compassable experience. There is not a single thing, or force, 
or law, or element, known to the physico-chemical sciences 
which has the "hall-mark" of eternity stamped upon it. 
However, this much we may comfortably and confidently say: 
The more that science grows, the more does it appear that all 
realities somehow hang together in a rational unity, irrespect- 
ive of the limitations of time and of space. Stated in other and 
somewhat more figurative terms, we may say: The Being of 
the World is more and more known as a self-limiting and law- 
abiding Unity, in spite of the changes which are observed to 
take place in its endless times and its limitless spaces. 

About many things in the physical sciences, however, we 
find the experts themselves in doubt; or, if each one seems 
confident of the truth of his own judgments, there is no con- 
sensus of judgment, on the authority of which the unlearned 
man may depend for his knowledge. About such matters, 
suspension of judgment — that is, agnosticism in the more ac- 
ceptable meaning of the word — is for all men the reasonable 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 133 

attitude of mind. Here there is not sufficient evidence for a 
judgment, which shall have even enough of probability to 
warrant its entrance at the foot of that ascending scale by 
which we test the ever-varying degrees of what we call our 
knowledge. Here, then, is a case where, if the expert is more 
" cock-sure " than the outsider feels that he can reasonably 
be, it is the expert who is in the least reasonable and trust- 
worthy attitude of the two. In matters of mooted truths 
within the domain of the physico-chemical sciences, the atti- 
tude of trust with which the unscientific man approaches the 
man who, somehow — but not always by any means fairly — 
has attained a reputation for knowledge, is often pathetic. In 
all such cases the present limits of doubt are set in the fol- 
lowing ways: knowledge of the fact that there is conflicting 
evidence; knowledge of what the evidence on both sides really 
is ; knowledge of the directions in which, and methods by which, 
experience may be made to test, and to corroborate or to correct, 
the conflicting evidence; and, finally, the conviction that the 
reasonable attitude of mind is one of further inquiry, and 
pending such successful inquiry, the attitude of agnosticism. 
All this, under the circumstances, is the most valuable form of 
knowledge. 

In all those cognitive judgments which belong to another 
group of sciences, such as, from different points of view, are 
called the biological and psychological sciences, the limits 
both of scepticism and of knowledge fall under somewhat' 
different rules from those which we have been discussing. Up 
to the present hour, these sciences remain almost purely de- 
scriptive. They can recite the series of the phenomena which 
they observe : as to those general causes which, if known, would 
serve as more or less sufficient reasons for the phenomena, and 
for the character of the series in which they occur, these sci- 
ences are obliged, for the most part to remain discreetly silent; 
or to indulge themselves in hypotheses which, when examined, 
are found to soar on wings of fancy into regions of thin air, 



134 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

rather than to walk steadily and erect upon a firm grounding in 
all the observed facts. This is even much more true of the 
strictly so-called biological sciences than it is of those which 
are more clearly entitled to the cognomen " psychological." 
Indeed, much of what constitutes the science of so-called biol- 
ogy is really applied psychology. For within certain rather 
wide limits, experience gives us in a relatively immediate and 
certain way the true and satisfactory explanation of the 
changes in our own inner life; these reasons, which are them- 
selves psychological, we may then — although here the limits 
of safety are very indefinite and difficult to fix — use in explana- 
tion of the observed actions of the lower animals. As to the 
fact of their legitimate application in general to the human 
species, we have the highest degree of certitude next to that 
given in self-consciousness. We are, indeed, often in doubt 
as to the precise form of application. But there is nothing 
outside of my Self which I know so surely and can explain so 
fully, by reference to its real causes, as the doings of the other 
selves who belong to the same species. I know that they have 
feelings, thoughts, strivings, and conscious volitions, like my 
own; and that in these experiences of theirs must be found the 
real ground for the experience I have of them. That my own 
desires and volitions explain many of my deeds, I am sure; 
that similar desires and volitions explain the deeds of other 
men, I am almost equally sure ; that somewhat similar internal 
processes explain the behavior of my horse or dog, I am fairly 
— we may even say — sufficiently well convince to say " I know." 
But what explains the behavior of the amoeba when it seeks its 
food, of the phagocytic corpuscle when it finds its way to the 
destructive bacteria, of the spermatozoon when it seeks the 
ovum, of the tendril of the plant when it seeks support, of the 
root when it reaches out for nourishment ? — and so on, with all 
the thousands of similar inquiries which the descriptive history 
of biological phenomena incites. About the psychological an- 
swer to such inquiries, which has at different times commended 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 135 

itself, and then lost its favor among the professional students 
of biology, we may still remain in doubt. But deeper by far 
is our scepticism, and at present more helpless as to the future, 
when we ask the physical and chemical sciences to give us, in 
terms strictly their own, an explanation of such biological 
phenomena. Therefore, for the present, we continue to push 
back the limits of our knowledge of life, as something physical 
and chemical, by making more accurate, minute, and numer- 
ous, our descriptive histories of how living things appear to us 
to behave. In this way scepticism retreats, knowledge advances, 
but the mystery of life deepens, the limits of our agnosticism 
widen, curious and eager inquiry is quickened; and a certain 
softening, refining, and elevating effect upon our entire mental 
attitude toward the Being of the World is happily secured. 
All this, too, is knowledge; but it is knowledge appropriately 
and reasonably kept within its specific limits. 

In spite of the truths just presented, it is customary with 
students of the physical, and even of the biological sciences, 
to remark — usually with distrust and not infrequently with 
scantily concealed scorn — upon the uncertainties of so-called 
psychological science. To them, material things and physical 
events appear to have a quite superior reality; and the knowl- 
edge of and about these things and events seems to have an 
incontestible validity, which cannot be approached or even sim- 
ulated by those existences we call " souls," or by those experi- 
ences of these souls with which the student of psychology busies 
himself. This assumption is, indeed, partly justified; but it 
is even more largely due, on the one hand, to the faults and 
mistakes of psychologists, and, on the other, to the ignorance 
and prejudice of the students of the physical sciences. Doubt- 
less, physical substances can be observed, analyzed, and manipu- 
lated, for purposes of scientific investigation, as souls cannot. 
Equally beyond all doubt is it that the obvious qualities and 
relations of such substances are more stable and, as it were, 
open to common observation than are the qualities and rela- 



136 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

tions of the sort with which psychology has to deal. On the 
other hand, it is only through these very evanescent and subtle 
changes in his sense-impressions, and the relations established 
between them in which his experience consists, that man knows 
anything at all about the nature and modes of the behavior 
of physical substances. And it is the limits of human capacity 
for such sense-impressions, and for the activities of human 
imagination and thought, which fix both the limits of doubt 
and the limits of knowledge for the natural and physical sci- 
ences. But psychological science deals directly with these sense- 
impressions, imaginings, and thoughts — their nature, limits, 
and the grounds for trusting or doubting their deliverances. 
Within the limits of this kind of knowledge — the psychological 
— consciousness probes these activities and relations to the very 
bottom. What it actually is to see, to hear, to feel, to imagine, 
to think — this every man knows, although the physical condi- 
tions and concomitants of these experiences afford subjects for 
difficult, scientific research. This general fact compels the 
psychologist in his turn to resort for help to the physicist, the 
chemist, or the physiologist. 

When, moreover, we come to inquire more curiously into the 
essential nature of the existences with which we are dealing, 
the answer of psychology is, of all the sciences, much the most 
clear. For to speak truly, in both the name of science and in 
the name of common sense, the nature of the soul is essentially 
just what it most indubitably and clearly knows itself to be. 
But here is where too much of modern psychology is ready to 
sacrifice its birth-right. That parts of the brain, or of the 
spinal cord, or of the ganglia of the thoracic or abdominal 
cavities, may he in familiar relations with a consciousness not 
our own, is indeed a proposition fraught with seemingly in- 
solvable mystery, and doomed to unabated and everlasting 
scepticism. To speak, however, of a " subconscious Self," or of 
an " unconscious Self," or of a " doubly self-conscious Self," 
is to couple words together which are in their very nature 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 137 

contradictory. [Further consideration of this subject is re- 
served for another chapter.] 

The limits of that kind of knowledge which is not merely 
descriptive, but which includes either a demonstration or a 
more or less convincing collection of evidence for the estab- 
lishing of " causes/' have been greatly extended in modern 
times by the doctrine of evolution. This extension of knowl- 
edge, however, has not restricted, but has rather enlarged, 
the domain of scepticism. The complexity of the known phe- 
nomena needing to be explained has grown even faster than 
the imagination, based upon multiplied observations and ex- 
perimental data, has been able to supply the needed explana- 
tions. In a word, much more is known about the descriptive 
history of living forms, as they are distributed and interre- 
lated in the spaces of the earth's surface and the times of the 
earth's formation; but there is still needed a larger number, 
or a more intricate complication, than has yet been afforded by 
the scores of theories that claim to account for this history. 
It would be an unworthy perversion of the facts to say that 
the race is not gaining an increased knowledge of the mystery 
of life. But scepticism and agnosticism are still the only 
reasonable attitudes of mind toward the majority of the im- 
portant theories of evolution ; and the " reason " for them will 
probably continue quite " insufficient " through years, and 
perhaps centuries, of future scientific criticism. 

When we consider the reasonableness of the attitudes of 
mind called, respectively, scepticism, agnosticism, and criti- 
cism, toward those convictions and opinions which are grouped 
under such titles as ethics, aesthetics, and religion, we find our- 
selves engaged in a somewhat markedly different field of inquiry. 
Here it has been customary to contend that man must be 
content with faith only, and can never hope to attain to 
knowledge. Indeed, the entire course and outcome of the 
Kantian criticism is largely based upon this distinction. But 
Kant himself was far enough from intending to give an advant- 



138 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

age to scientific knowledge in its controversy with the ethical 
and religious beliefs of mankind. For, in his critical philos- 
ophy, — as we have already seen, — such knowledge is, essentially 
considered, only the intellect's constitutional way of arrang- 
ing the phenomena of sense ; and the island of scientific knowl- 
edge, " the home of truth " about phenomena, is surrounded 
by the impenetrable ocean of the unknown Eeal. By a faith, 
on the other hand, which envisages the presence and the mean- 
ing of an indubitable moral law, we are convicted of the prac- 
tical necessity of living as though God, Freedom, and Im- 
mortality, were realities independent of either human knowl- 
edge or human faith. But it has already been made clear that 
the very nature of human cognitive faculty, and of its opera- 
tion, is such as to render false and misleading any such com- 
plete distinction between faith and knowledge. Knowledge 
itself exists, and grows, only as it employs scepticism and in- 
corporates faith; and a certain exercise of faith is one funda- 
mental condition of the validity of all human knowledge. On 
the other hand, faith that is not based on knowledge, or is en- 
tirely void of knowledge, cannot even establish itself as faith. 
An attitude of " pure " belief toward any alleged fact, or ut- 
tered truth, would be absurd, were it not primarily inconceiv- 
able. In analyzing the conditions and grounds of any cogni- 
tive act, or even of the mental attitude of scepticism or ag- 
nosticism, the entire case may be stated by espousing either side 
of the controversy over the primacy of faith or knowledge, as 
it has raged among the theologians. I believe that I may 
know (credo ut intelligam), and I know that I may believe 
(intelligo ut credam) ; — both positions may be assumed as 
equally descriptive of the actual processes of mental life. 

By affirming the inseparableness of faith and knowledge 
it is not meant, however, to deny the marked differences in 
the attitudes of mind which are reasonable, and indeed neces- 
sary, toward moral and religious truths and toward the truths 
of the natural and physical sciences. These differences have 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 139 

their roots in differences essential to the different classes of 
man's experiences. The data of sense-impressions differ from 
those afforded by the moral and religious consciousness. Not 
that their data can be kept apart; or that the interpretation 
given to them by the moral and religious nature can be ex- 
plained without reference to the workings of intellect and feel- 
ing in scientific research and scientific development. For the 
world is one, in some sort, from whatever different point of 
view it be regarded; and the human soul is a unity, of some 
sort, whether it be regarded as scientifically inclined and en- 
gaged, or as inclined to duty and piety. If there be any moral 
law, or moral principle having the right to command human 
conduct, it must have its seat and manifestation in this real, 
one world; and if there be a God, such as the highest type of 
the religious consciousness recognizes, this real world must 
be God's World. Nor does it require an impossible amount of 
research to discover that the physical sciences are themselves 
interpenetrated and profoundly influenced by quasi-moral and 
religious feelings and conceptions; while ethics and religion 
are chastened, corrected, confirmed, and illumined by the dis- 
coveries of the natural and physical sciences. 

Notwithstanding the fact that knowledge in matters of con- 
duct, art, and religion, shares the essential characteristics of 
all human cognition, certain important differences cannot fail 
to be recognized. Man's mental attitudes toward the alleged 
truths of ethics, aesthetics, and religion are normally and 
necessarily different from those held toward the truths of the 
natural and physical sciences. The causes of this difference 
are chiefly the following three. And, first, a large body of 
the accepted axioms of morality and religion — and to a less 
extent, of artistic matters — fall under the influences of an im- 
mediate and imperative call to action. In this respect, they 
are like those cognitive attitudes toward material things which 
men are compelled to assume in order to live at all. It is 
the " compulsion of the deed," rather than of the ratio- 



140 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

cinative processes prolonged in any intelligent and self-con- 
scious way, which makes men know what is true, because 
morally right, in conduct, or satisfactory in matters of be- 
lief and worship. In all the earlier and immature intellec- 
tual life of the individual and of the race, the apprehension 
and criticism of reasons that may afford sufficient logical 
support to their cognitive judgments plays as little part in 
morals, religion, and art, as it does in all the unquestioned 
customs of eating, drinking, hunting, fishing, marrying, be- 
getting children, and burying the dead. That is to say, the 
conditions of the environment, and the most immediate satis- 
factions of desire and will, require certain mental attitudes 
to which experience contributes most of that kind of support 
which converts blind and instinctive reactions into rational 
beliefs, and into more or less intellectually reasonable con- 
clusions. It is in this field, and in this field alone, that the 
doctrine of philosophical Pragmatism, as an attempt at an 
epistemology, affords any faintest semblance of an adequate 
solution to the problem of knowledge. 

Second: the cognitive judgment in matters of ethics, aes- 
thetics, and religion, is normally and necessarily more a mat- 
ter of feeling, and of dependence upon the satisfaction of the 
feelings, than is the case with cognitive judgment's in mat- 
ters of the natural and physical sciences. This fact, regarded 
as a cause, is universally recognized by all attempts at a 
psychological analysis of such judgments in the two classes 
of cases. The fact that it is a cause, and that it operates so ef- 
fectively as a cause, is one of the principal reasons for the pres- 
ence of so much agnosticism in religion among those who are 
pleased to call themselves too exclusively and even discourte- 
ously, "men of science." But again, we must insist that the 
influence of feeling cannot be excluded from the mind in form- 
ing the most coolly scientific judgments about matters wholly 
indifferent to the interests of morality, art, and religion. We 
have just said, "wholly indifferent"; but in fact no scientific 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 141 

truths are wholly indifferent to, or alienated from, these same 
emotional influences and their corresponding interests. Moral, 
aesthetical, and even quasi-religious emotions and interests, 
interpenetrate and largely influence all the highest concep- 
tions and generalizations of the physical and natural sciences. 
Any depreciation of the profounder and more permanent 
forms of human feeling, with respect to the part they play 
in the formation and development of man's knowledge of 
the Being of the World, of the truest and realist of realities, 
is bad psychology and leads, both in science and religion, to 
a defective philosophy. The feelings are not simply causes 
for illusory and blind beliefs in ethics, art, and religion; they 
are, the rather, reasons for the truth of these beliefs. If 
there is any one profound and important principle which the 
biological sciences are requiring us to recognize and more fully 
appreciate, it is this: Living beings find their way to the 
satisfactions and higher developments of life along the paths 
of instinct and feeling rather than of conscious ratiocinative 
processes. 

It is true that nature demands of man an apprehension, 
and an ever-increasing comprehension, of what ends he should 
strive after, and of the methods by which those ends may be 
reached. This demand is for intellect of a superior capacity. 
By somehow attaining this intellect, the animal has become 
human. By using and cultivating this intellect the human 
being developes as man. But it is also no less true that the 
human being has somehow received a superior outfit of so- 
called instincts and feelings, especially in the form which 
constitutes the basis for his interest in science, as well as 
in morals, art, and religion. The strivings and satisfaction 
of these feelings contribute largely to the specific qualities 
of his judgments in matters of morals, art, and religion. 
Without these instinctive strivings and the satisfaction of 
these higher forms of feeling, man would be as little human 
as if he lacked that development of intellect which is quite 



142 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

too often supposed to be his only claim to superiority over 
the animals. Judgments toward which these strivings lead 
forward, and which afford satisfactions to them, are not in- 
deed removed wholly from the conditions which satisfy the 
"principle of sufficient reason." But we have seen how vague 
and changeable are these conditions. And when — as one is 
always, in one's ultimate consideration of the problems of 
knowledge, forced to do — the teleological point of view is 
assumed; then it is seen how necessary and right, even from 
the logical standpoint, it is to regard the emotional causes of 
knowledge in the fields of ethics, art, and religion, as justify- 
ing reasons. In nothing else is the mind obligated to be more 
" reasonable " than in its demand for a " sufficient reason " 
to justify a cognitive judgment of an ethical, artistic, or 
religious character. Unless all human nature has gone 
wrong, and the larger Nature which encompasses and 
compels human nature is deceiving and Self-deceived, the sat- 
isfactions in the form of judgments, which these ethical, ar- 
tistic, and religious, strivings of our human selves require, 
must be admitted into the field of a knowledge that has suffi- 
cient (or reasonable) reasons in its justification. 

But, in the third place, the reasons on which a system, or 
a looser collection, of cognitive judgments in matters of morals, 
art, and religion, is to be built up, differ essentially in some 
other respects, from those which form the foundations of the 
physical and natural sciences. In the latter, we take our start 
from sense-perceptions, express ourselves chiefly in terms 
representative of sensuous experiences, and return for the test- 
ing of our judgments to the facts of sense-experience. Now, 
from the facts and truths of the physical and natural sciences, 
neither morals, art, nor religion, can free itself. Neither 
ought ever to wish to free itself from these facts and truths. 
But there are other facts and truths which can neither be 
envisaged, nor inferred, nor tested in the same way. And it 
is largely with these other facts and truths that the judg- 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 143 

ments of a moral, aesthetical, or religious character, attempt 
to deal. Such are the facts of what the " old psychology " used 
to designate — and with commendable propriety — an " inner 
experience." All experience is, in its very nature, " inner " ; 
and it is, also, always dependent upon conditions of experience 
for the human Self, that are " outward/' or " outward-re- 
ferring." For this latter reason we cannot even conceive of 
morality, art, or religion, in any other environment than in a 
world of space and time and things. Moral conduct is of sl 
Self toward other selves; and other selves are, for every Self, 
only a certain kind of things. Art can have no formal or con- 
crete existence without ideals of beauty 7 being incorporated in 
things. Eeligion is in, and of, a World whose Being is mani- 
fested in things and in selves, and as apprehended by selves. 
It is, however, still true that the original and impressive data 
of ethics, aesthetics, and religion, are experiences, not of sense- 
impressions, but of self-conscious states. It is from these inner 
experiences, regarded as needing interpretation and justifica- 
tion in the World of Keality, that the cognitive judgments 
of ethics, aesthetics, and religion, are derived. But these judg- 
ments may be more or less logically compacted into a system 
to be defended by argument, although they can never be re- 
solved into demonstrations that will submit themselves to test- 
ing by the methods of the physical and natural sciences. 

From this description of the nature of human knowledge in 
matters of morality, art, and religion, it may be seen how 
the attitudes of scepticism, criticism, and their sequence of ag- 
nosticism, or of more or less positive knowledge and reasoned 
faith, respectively, apply. In them all the private experiences 
of the individual are insistent and determinative. This is 
inevitable; for temperament, dominant modes of feeling, and 
early instruction or the effects of the habitual social environ- 
ment, are the more powerful causes here. The data of experi- 
ence in these matters are more exclusively individualistic. The 
attitudes toward the possible cognitive judgments are more mat- 



144 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ters of the satisfaction of emotions, strivings of will, and prac- 
tical interests. But for philosophy here also, as truly — and 
even in some respects much more confidentially — as in the 
fields of the physical and natural sciences, the experience of 
the race justifies the affirmation of a certain content of knowl- 
edge. Here, too, history plainly shows a development of knowl- 
edge as already reached in the past, and encourages the 
cheerful and constant faith in a future yet larger develop- 
ment. 

From a somewhat different' point of view the mind is now 
led again to the conclusion which was reached before by mak- 
ing an analysis of the meaning, for the practical purpose of 
developing human knowledge, of the principle of sufficient 
reason. However demonstration, or what Kant ' called proof 
of the "apodeictic " sort, may be made to apply in problems 
of pure mathematics and pure logic, man can never 
attain any such incontrovertible grounds on which to place his 
cognitive judgments respecting the truths of the great world of 
selves and of things. Indeed, no one knows one's own Self, its 
true nature or its actual past, by the path of infallible demon- 
stration. Self-consciousness, like sense-perception, is momen- 
tary and incomplete; memory is fallible, and so is inference. 
The growing body of knowledge, both for the individual and 
for the race, is rather like a living organism, in which the more 
obvious or quite secret and mysterious processes of metabolism 
are constantly taking place. Some parts are relatively stable; 
some are momentarily changing ; and most parts lie between the 
two extremes, as tested by their stability and their serviceable- 
ness. That which can be appropriated in the organism, be- 
cause it fits its essential nature and its practical uses, is the 
true; the harmful or poisonous or unadaptable element's of 
half-truths, falsehoods, and foolish conceits, are constantly 1 
being eliminated by the vitality and metabolic vigor of the 
organism. 

The further more precise definition of those limits of seep- 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 145 

ticism and agnosticism which we are now discussing belongs 
to logic, — not of the so-called " pure " or a priori variety, an 
exercise which, however mentally pleasing and invigorating, 
contributes little or nothing to either the growth or the de- 
fense of truth, — but to the applied logic of the positive sciences. 
Here, each science must have due regard, on the one hand, to 
the body of knowledge which it can claim to have already 
established by proofs satisfactory enough to command a con- 
sensus of intelligent opinion, and on the other hand, to the 
nature of the subjects with which it deals and to the character 
and amount of proof which it is reasonable to demand for 
them. Inasmuch as none of these sciences can be cultivated 
in isolation from all the others, but on the contrary, each one 
of them is likely to find itself in need of something from all 
the others ; and because they all make up the sum of that which 
can be known about the Being and the Behavior of the One 
World; each particular science must grow in knowledge of its 
own, by attaining harmony with the others. Thus, just as the 
changing limits of scepticism, and the enlarging areas of intel- 
ligent and firm conviction, placed on grounds of sufficient rea- 
son, are adjusted by a continuous process of development in 
the experience of the individual; so readjustment and improve- 
ment take place in the larger, more comprehensive, and truer, 
experience of the race. The more that every individual mind 
opens itself with candor to this larger and truer experience, 
the greater and more trustworthy is its own growth in knowl- 
edge. This is to say that the development of knowledge is 
(1) a matter of degrees, limitations, and changing conditions; 
is (2) proved only with a larger or more limited degree of 
probability; because it is (3) constantly being tested, and 
confirmed or modified, by the growing experience of the race; 
and, therefore, (4) the truth as to the Being of the World is 
more comprehensively, definitively, and surely known through 
the strivings and achievements in history, of the entire com- 
munity of self-conscious and rational minds. These last two 



146 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

considerations bring us face to face with the undoubtedly teleo- 
logical and social character of human knowledge, and of the 
conditions and causes of its development. 

But Nature, both within man and without, has arranged 
for another and quite insuperable limit to the sceptical and 
agnostic attitudes of mind. For these attitudes inevitably 
reach a limit which cannot possibly be itself transcended, 
but which indisputably shows that every act of knowledge by a 
self-conscious Self is essentially transcendent of that Self. 
In a word, the very attempt to invade the field of knowledge 
by this kind of scepticism, with a view to establish an agnostic 
position, of necessity defeats itself. Or, to state the case in 
a somewhat enigmatical way: The experience of every in- 
dividual Self includes the results and the confidences of a 
universal experience. "I" — the individual subject of the 
cognitive act, or state of knowledge — transcend the " me " in 
every such act or state, that has reference to other selves or to 
things. And, inasmuch as my individual experience always 
implicates, or explicitly involves, such a reference; this indi- 
vidual experience always passes beyond the individual and 
singularly limited factors of the experience, into the universal 
and the incontestably true. If, therefore, by philosophical (or 
epistemological) scepticism, or agnosticism, be meant the doubt 
and the denial of the validity of the principles and presup- 
positions of knowledge, in their applicability to the reality of 
things and of selves; then such scepticism and agnosticism be- 
come simply and undeniably absurd. They are more than simply 
impossible: they are intrinsically absurd, and thpy cannot state 
themselves for purposes of argument, whether by way of con- 
sent or of refutation ; for in the very attempt to state themselves 
their own refutation is inextricably involved. Thus all that 
is properly involved in the Cartesian point of starting for an 
incontestable theory of knowledge, is equally involved in the 
statement of the positions of such a kind of epistemological 
scepticism or agnosticism. To say dubito (I am doubting), or 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 147 

nescio or agnosco (I do not know) implies the ergo sum (the 
postulate of my existence) as necessarily and incontestably as 
to say cogito (I am thinking). Self-conscious doubt and self- 
conscious ignorance are as valid and indisputable affirmations 
of self-conscious existence as can possibly be made. And since 
even to state these sceptical or agnostic attitudes — not to say, 
argue them — implies the existence of other selves and other 
things, the limit which the fleeting moment and singular object 
of self-consciousness presents, has already been transcended. 
The individual has exercised his warrant for assuming his 
companionship in a universal, or at least larger, experience. 
His reason has made the bow of allegiance and submission to 
the encompassing and controlling Season, in which the former 
"lives, and moves, and has its being." And now if the ag- 
nostic, with reference to the fundamental beliefs and reasoned 
conclusions of this larger experience, avows not only the maxim 
" I-do-not-now-know," but also " You do not know," and " No- 
body knows, or ever will know, or from the very nature of 
things can know"; then he is no longer agnostic, but has be- 
come the most conceited and irrational of dogmatists. He has 
taken the liberty to transcend his own particular and limited 
experience in order to deny the abstract possibility of such 
an act of transcending, on his own part, and on the part of all 
others. But how does he even dare to assume that there are 
other selves with whom he may argue the case by an appeal 
to their common reason; or other things about the existence 
and doings of which the argument may become, as it were, a 
valid transaction? 

When scepticism has once, by an act of faith in reason, over- 
leaped the boundaries of epistemological agnosticism, it is con- 
fessedly difficult to tell how far it may be compelled by argu- 
ment to go in its concessions to the possibility of a valid knowl- 
edge of reality. It is now on common ground with the 
experience of the race. And the race is not, and never can be, 
agnostic after the fashion of this kind of agnosticism. That 



148 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

the growth of man's knowledge itself constantly compels the re- 
jection, or modification, of much of the dogmatism of man- 
kind, there can be no doubt. The truth of such growth is a 
historical fact. The fact extends itself over all the fields of 
human knowledge and opinion — the scientific as well as, and 
perhaps even more completely than, the ethical, artistic, and 
religious. It certainly would seem, however, that scepticism 
must be unavailable with regard to the validity of those con- 
stitutional forms of the cognitive faculties which of necessity 
fix the limits to the forms of the qualities and relations of 
reality as known by man, and which both Aristotle and Kant 
called the " categories." These categories, if only we could 
discover and define them, would have to remain essentially un- 
changed and undisturbed in their reign over the kingdom of 
truth and reality, by any efforts to take toward them the ag- 
nostic position. And, in fact, we find that their unquestioned 
acceptance is at least a practical necessity. But as has just 
been indicated, both logic and the theory of knowledge have 
from the first found it difficult to agree upon the origin, num- 
ber, and the interpretation of the so-called categories. Of 
late, especially, the attempt has been frequently made to criti- 
cize the categories as though they were themselves the prod- 
ucts of evolution. However interesting such speculation may 
be made, and not only interesting but seemingly scientific, it 
is well never to forget the limitations under which all specu- 
lation is always itself placed. The theory of evolution is, of 
course, only an hypothesis; it is, the rather, a grouping of 
many hypotheses which are not as yet thoroughly assimilated 
and harmonized. So far as these hypotheses deal with events 
before human knowledge was, they are obliged to frame them- 
selves, in terms only of human knowledge as it now is. Space 
was, Time was, and there were Relations of position and of 
action and reaction, involving Causation and Law; there was 
Matter, and Motion, and some semblance of Order; and the 
processes were teleological ; they moved forward toward some 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 149 

End; — all this, in the origins and ongoings of the evolution- 
ary process before the human race came into existence. 

Therefore, all possible hypotheses of evolution, as applied 
to a world where as yet no human knowledge is, must them- 
selves imply the most tremendous and unlimited confidence in 
the valid applicability of such knowledge to the real Being of 
the World. No thorough-going evolutionist can be an agnostic 
with respect to the categories without becoming absurd. But a 
fortiori is all this true when an attempt is made to treat of 
the categories themselves in terms of an evolutionary hy- 
pothesis. We are then assuming to know, on grounds valid for 
all present knowledge, and beyond or beneath the limits of 
which no knowledge is conceivable, how knowledge began to 
be and got itself established, when as yet there was no knowl- 
edge. If there is any subject about which one may be an ag- 
nostic, surely it is just this: How did knowledge of any sort 
and about any thing, come to be? Surely also, if we know 
anything with assurance, we know that knowledge of the con- 
ditions on which the origin and development of all knowledge 
depended, can claim no exemption from the darkening or il- 
lumining effects of the so-called categories. May I trust them, 
as representing and revealing Eeality ? Yes, or No ? If I may, 
then I cannot be agnostic with reference to their present valid- 
ity, and at the same time retain a foolish faith in respect to 
their applicability to a doubtful past. 

There is only one conceivable way in which the most thor- 
oughly sceptical examination of the problem in knowledge 
can even seem to end in what has been described as "epis- 
temological agnosticism." This is by a criticism which results 
in showing that man's cognitive faculties are, by their very 
constitution, involved in irreducible and essential self-contra- 
dictions. Therefore, they cannot claim any indisputable au- 
thority for their functioning or for its products as truthful 
representatives of the real Being of the World. In other words, 
the moment it tries to attribute a valid ontological (or ** extra- 



150 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

mental ") reference to any human cognitive processes, com- 
plete agnosticism finds itself involved in hopeless contradic- 
tions. In the developments of modern philosophy this view 
has taken shape in a doctrine of alleged " antinomies." In its 
later forms the doctrine of antinomies goes back to Kant; 
but it has assumed a variety of forms, — in general far cruder 
and less penetrated with critical acumen, — in the hands of such 
writers as Sir William Hamilton, Dean Mansel, and Mr. Brad- 
ley. In the case of each one of these writers, however, and 
even in the case of Kant, who was by far the greatest of them 
all, the contradictions alleged to be found in the laws which 
control the operations of man's cognitive faculty, really exist 
only between the barren and artificial abstractions which in no 
case truthfully represent either the real constitution or the 
actual operations of this faculty. 

In a word, the doctrine of antinomies' finds its grounds, not 
in the actual experience of knowledge, under its normal con- 
ditions and limitations, but in the attempt of the doctrinaire 
to press his sceptical criticism beyond the limits, where neither 
scepticism nor criticism can go. 

We might, indeed, object to the word " antinomy " as a 
specious attempt to incorporate essentially contradictory con- 
ceptions under a single term skillfully selected for a sinis- 
ter purpose. For, in truth, laws (vb[ioc.) cannot antagon- 
ize each other. Laws have only an abstract or ideal ex- 
istence; they are generalizations which summarize the way in 
which, under certain conditions, realities are known or believed 
to behave themselves. In nature, every concrete and actual 
occurrence is, as it were, a summary of numerous so-called 
laws, which, by the employment of logical subtleties, may easily 
be made — as mere laws — squarely to contradict each other. 
Thus the flight of every arrow, the actual overtaking of every 
tortoise by an Achilles, solves the ancient and sophistical an- 
tinomy which proved such facts impossible. It is real things 
and real selves, which actually oppose each other; which strive 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 151 

in contrary directions; which clash and act and react upon each 
other, under an infinite variety of conditions and in an in- 
finite number of ways. This is the real world, as we indubitably 
know it to be. Our knowledge is for us the solution of the 
problem which every transaction in the real world concretely 
solves, — the problem, namely, of how many different things 
and selves can actually exist in the World which we — although 
always imperfectly, and, in general doubtfully, as to its precise 
and comprehensive manner — know to be some sort of a Unity. 
It is not necessary or feasible here to consider in detail 1 
the different forms which have been taken by the philosophical 
doctrine of alleged "antinomies." It is notable, however, that 
the advocates of the doctrine all feel obliged in some way or 
other to open the door of the dark cage in which they have 
confined human reason as though it were a pair, or a group, 
of wild beasts whose very nature compelled them to ceaseless 
warfare and attempts at mutual destruction, into the sun-lit 
spaces of the kingdom of reality and truth. This the more 
humane and kindly disposed among these agnostics toward the 
intellectual strivings and emotional satisfactions of humanity 
usually accomplish by an appeal to the necessities of faith. 
Kant's avowed purpose was to remove (the pretense of) knowl- 
edge, in order to make room for faith. He would have us be- 
lieve that, and act " as though," Eeality really is what pure 
reason would seem to show it cannot be. In doing this, how- 
ever, Kant virtually opens the back door to many of the 
psychological and epistemological truths concerning the na- 
ture and validity of all human knowledge, which he has before 
either rudely thrust out, or politely bowed out, of the front 
door of his critical edifice. But man cannot' deal in this double 
way with his own reason. Human reason is either all, — or at 
least much more than Kant allows by way of so-called faith, — 

i See the author's Philosophy of Knowledge, Chapter XIV, where 
" the antinomies " of Kant and of Mr. Bradley are given a thorough 
criticism. 



152 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

or it is nothing. And the Oriental doctrine of Maya is really 
more consistent, however untenable and practically mischievous, 
than is the Occidental doctrine of antinomies. Thus when Mr. 
Bradley has convicted the constitutional forms of human cog- 
nition of being, in " their very essence," " infected " and " self- 
contradictory," in one part of his book, he cannot possibly suc- 
ceed in establishing a rational ontology in another part of the 
same book. Such philosophical agnosticism and any kind of 
metaphysics — whether that upon which the " plain man " goes 
about his daily work, or the " scientist " conducts the experi- 
ments of his laboratory, or the " philosopher " discourses of 
the categories — cannot lie down in the same bed together. 

Within the fitting limits, therefore, scepticism and agnos- 
ticism remain legitimate and valuable attitudes of the human 
mind toward all the objects both of knowledge and of so-called 
faith. Their legitimacy, and even their necessity for the growth 
of knowledge, is proved by the experience both of the individual 
and of the race. It is not simply that in this way only can 
error be discerned and separated from truth; but it is also 
and chiefly that the very life of the mind, in its most eager and 
successful pursuit of truth, necessarily follows the same path. 
But these attitudes are limited in respect to all forms 
of alleged truth, by the necessities of the practical life and 
by the growing experience of the individual and of the race. 
And inasmuch as no experience can possibly be mentally repre- 
sented, not to say faithfully analyzed and adequately repre- 
sented, as a purely subjective affair; all experience involves 
either an immediate seizure, or a more or less incomplete com- 
prehension through processes of reasoning, of the existence, 
qualities, and relations, of real things and real selves. This 
growth of knowledge is a sort of progressive limitation of the 
attitudes of scepticism and agnosticism; while at the same time 
it opens up new fields to these same attitudes of mind. But 
when these attitudes are taken toward the principles and pre- 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 153 

suppositions of all knowledge, toward the validity of the onto- 
logical reference and the truth-telling character of the cognitive 
faculties of man; then they involve themselves in hopeless con- 
fusions and self-contradictions; then a giddiness of intellect 
results which tumbles the whole fabric of human knowledge 
into a bottomless pit of both logical and practical absurdity. 



CHAPTER VIII 

METAPHYSICS, AS A THEORY OF REALITY 

The relation between a philosophical theory of knowledge 
and systematic metaphysics as a theory of reality is so in- 
timate that they may almost be regarded as two aspects of 
essentially the same problem. The grounds for this intimate 
relation are laid in the very nature of knowledge itself. The 
consequence of the relation shows itself in almost all discus- 
sions of either of these two problems, or two aspects of one 
problem. For one's attitude toward the problem of knowledge 
is sure to be influenced by one's ontological theories; and, on 
the other hand, either the dogmatic, the sceptical, the critical, 
or the wholly agnostic, attitude pervades and influences the dis- 
cussions of most writers on metaphysics. Kant, indeed, set 
out upon his prolonged journey through the several fields of 
human reason, in the critical way, and with the purpose of 
making a clear-cut distinction between this journey and an 
excursion in ontological speculation. Ontology, he proposed 
to treat in summary fashion, after he had tested the cognitive 
powers by the critical process. But his criticism ended in a 
complete agnosticism, so far as any valid ontology, or theory 
of reality was concerned; at the same time this entire process 
of criticism was itself permeated and influenced by uncriti- 
cized metaphysical assumptions and presuppositions. Thus the 
Kantian agnosticism excludes the possibility of metaphysics as 
even an approximately valid theory of reality; it reduces meta- 
physics to a dry and uninteresting tabulation of illusory cate- 
gories and compulsory antinomies. 

In the interests of clearness, then, it would seem desirable 

154 



METAPHYSICS, AS A THEORY OF REALITY 155 

to preface the following chapters on metaphysics as a theory 
of reality by a brief summary of the conclusions reached in the 
preceding chapters on the theory of knowledge. 

And, first, we have seen what knowledge is from the 
psychological point of view: that is, what it is to know as an 
actual fact of human experience. In this datum all theories 
of knowledge must find themselves included: they are false 
and mischievous or defective and unsatisfying, if they exclude 
any of the essential features or implications of this datum. 
Now knowledge is never obtained or substantiated by the ratio- 
cinations of pure intellect alone. It invariably implies, and 
in its more immediate forms of self-consciousness and sense- 
perception it actually is, an experience which involves the en- 
tire active Self. It requires the felt strivings of a will, op- 
posed by a reality that does not will as it wills. As being an 
active and suffering part of this world of things and selves, 
men know that they are, and what they are; and in increasing 
measure, that things are, and what things are. Any critic of 
knowledge who takes his datum of experience as other, or less, 
than this experienced fact, is doomed to wander from the very 
start; and he is more fortunate than most such critics are, if 
he pulls his wits together before he finds himself virtually in- 
sane, in the midst of the shadow-shapes of his own abstrac- 
tions and speculative ghosts. 

From this it follows, second, that all knowledge is of reality. 
Some real being — some Self, myself or some other self, or some 
Thing — is always the object of knowledge. There is no cogni- 
tion which has not existence for its correlative. Neither is 
the real being which is the knower's object, — and made such 
by his cognitive activity, — to be resolved by any sceptical or 
critical examination into a dream without a dreamer, or a 
shadow without either substance or sunlight to account for its 
casting. Two words have, indeed, been particularly potent in 
developing and impressing a theory of knowledge which aims 
to render metaphysics as a theory of reality impossible by ren- 



15G KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

dering all knowledge illusory. These are the word " phenome- 
non " and the word " idea." For the philosophical misuse of 
the first of these words, in modern times, Kant is chiefly re- 
sponsible. With him phenomenon was identical with the ob- 
ject of knowledge, and " noumenon," or actuality, or " thing- 
in-itself," was retired into the background as essentially un- 
knowable and, therefore, forever unknown. For a somewhat 
similar distinction the words " appearance " and " reality " 
have been substituted by a modern writer. By forcing to a 
false issue this distinction one has at the last to face an impass- 
able gulf between the apparent and the actual or real world 
(die wirkliclie und die scheiribare Welt). But the very distinc- 
tion between the phenomenon and the noumenon, the apparent 
and the real, arises only in the process of knowledge; and it is 
valid proof of the falsity of the agnostic position toward the 
authority for reality of the cognitive process. The very nature 
of the distinction — dependent, as it is, upon the nature of the 
experience in which it originates — shows that its two terms are 
mutually related, and dependent, each upon the other, for their 
mleaning and for their application to every act of knowledge 
and every class of objects. There are no phenomena that are 
not of some real object, to some real subject; there are no ap- 
pearances which are not of some real thing, or self, to some 
real self. 

That kind of subjectivism, with its sceptical philosophy, 
which interposed some so-called idea between the knower and 
the object known, and then insisted that things and souls are 
so unlike that no valid commerce can be had between them, 
but that all intercourse must be rendered illusory, so far as 
reality is concerned, by being mediated through images of 
reality, may be said to have suffered a death that knows no 
resurrection. Its slayers have been the critical philosophy 
which emanated from Kant, and the splendid triumphs of 
the particular sciences which have proceeded with their work 
of increasing knowledge of the real world on the basis of a 



METAPHYSICS, AS A THEORY OF REALITY 157 

common-sense faith in the cognitive powers of collective hu- 
manity. 

But, thirdly, every one who attempts a systematic study of 
metaphysical problems must bear constantly in mind the de- 
grees of knowledge and the limits which are normal with the 
different kinds of knowledge, in order to save himself at every 
point from those errors of over-confidence that are apt to char- 
acterize the philosophy of Absolutism. If not only the stamp 
of imperfection, but also the certainty of error, belongs to all 
our human attempts at comprehending the concrete realities 
of the World, even when these attempts are confined within the 
limits of some definite problem in the pettiest division of the 
smallest of the particular sciences; then, surely, the attempt to 
present a tenable and comprehensive doctrine of the total Being 
of the World should begin, proceed, and terminate, with a 
goodly show of genuine modesty. Such a system of meta- 
physics can never become a matter to be tested by the indi- 
vidual^ self -consciousness or by the sense-impressions of the 
multitude of mankind. It must be the result of reflective 
thinking, which, so far as possible, brings together the experi- 
ences of the race in an effort to interpret them so as to satisfy 
their many-sided and most imperative and permanent demands, 

On the other hand, however, the philosopher has certain rea- 
sons for an unusual confidence and a large measure of good 
cheer, when he turns to the subject of metaphysics proper. 
For, after all, it is here that he may force, if he is skillful, all 
his fellow thinkers — so-called " plain men," students of the 
particular sciences, and students of philosophy — into a certain 
large amount of agreement with himself and with one another. 
In truth, all men are naturally and necessarily metaphysicians. 
They are obliged to interpret experience in terms of some sort 
of a theory of reality. Their differences in the form of inter- 
pretation arise chiefly from two causes: (1) Some are occu- 
pied more seriously and intelligently with the interpretation 
of one corner or side of experience, and some with another; 



158 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

(2) some are more bold than others and willing to go further 
toward an attempt at an ultimate and comprehensive inter- 
pretation, while others are timid and draw back. Thus those 
metaphysical wranglings of which agnosticism makes so much 
are largely due to differences of emphasis, and differences as 
to the point at which different thinkers get confused, or tired, 
and resolve to stop thinking. 

And, finally, in attempting the problems of metaphysics as 
a theory of reality, the only safe way is to start from experi- 
ence and always be ready to return to the testing of experience 
again. In saying this it is evident that we are using the word 
" experience " in a most comprehensive and, therefore, some- 
what vague way. Out of experience, as the fleeting state of 
the individual's consciousness, considered as such, no knowledge, 
and a fortiori, no system of metaphysics can come. But this 
is not the whole of experience, in the larger and fuller mean- 
ing of the word. All that the race has acquired of knowledge, 
including the knowledge of its own instincts, emotions, striv- 
ings, habits, history, as well as of the qualities and relations 
and evolution of things, affords contributions to that theory 
of reality, which it is the aim of metaphysics to establish on 
ever broader and sounder foundations of experience. Thus it 
happens that we may know more about the meaning of this 
whole World as interpreted by the race's experience with It, 
than we can as yet know about the constitution of radium, or 
the causes that operate in the development of the sea-worm, or 
in the behavior of a white blood-corpuscle in its fight with poi- 
sonous bacteria. 

Metaphysics is an attempt to answer by reflective thinking, 
on the basis of experience, what Matthew Arnold has declared 
to be a " first want " : This is the " want to know what being 
is." Or as Ribot has well said : " Metaphysics is but a most 
noble and elevated way of conceiving things." All human ex- 
perience of knowledge both assumes and enforces and illus- 
trates the fact, with its various implications and convictions : — 



METAPHYSICS, AS A THEORY OF REALITY 159 

Something is real. Nay, more : it all assumes and enforces and 
illustrates the vast and complicated general fact, that innu- 
merable real selves and real things are known to be existent, 
and to be actually related, in One World. With reference to 
this assumption metaphysics proposes two questions which be- 
come its two most important problems in the effort to inter- 
pret the experience in which the assumption is involved. First: 
What are the qualities, or characteristics, possessed by all that 
makes a valid claim to be considered real? or, in other 
words: What is it to be real, as things and selves are known 
to be real? And, second: What kind of a unity actually be- 
longs to this world of concrete and manifold realities? or, in 
other words: How shall we understand and interpret the Be- 
ing of the One real World? 

The moment the meaning of these questions is comprehended, 
it is seen that metaphysics is no side issue or adventitious and 
unimportant undertaking; neither is it an exercise for phi- 
losophers of the school, or of the den, alone to undertake. On 
the contrary, its problems are — some of them in their con- 
crete forms, at least — solved each hour, and each moment, of 
every day, in the interests of the practical life and, indeed, to 
meet the demands of living at all. The inmates of no mad- 
house are so insane as would be the man who had absolutely 
no standards for distinguishing between the reality of his own 
Self and his own fleeting states, or between the reality of 
things or other selves and his own illusions or dreams. More- 
over, every adult human being is absolutely convinced, let him 
be never so savage or near to the mythical being of the "prim- 
itive man," that the world in the midst of which he lives, with 
all its diversities of phenomena and changes in appearance, is, 
after all, in some sort really one and the same world through- 
out. In a word: Every man is an unfaltering believer in 
reality; every man is a more or less skillful metaphysician. 
While, if the metaphysics could be taken out from under the 
so-called positive sciences they, too, would not be distinguish- 



160 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

able from illusions and dreams; although they might have the 
distinction of involving a consensus of many dreamers and 
lunatics. But among all these classes of compulsory metaphy- 
sicians, there are none so dogmatic as the men who decline to 
tolerate metaphysical discussion at all. "Jacobi, Fichte, and 
Schelling, all belong," says Herbart, to the age when people 
were singing: — 

"Hear ye! Things-in-themselves will be sold under the hammer! 
Since Metaphysics lately deceased without leaving an heir." 

To which elegant couplet Mr. Shadworth Hodgson has pro- 
posed to reply as follows: 

"What though Things-in-themselves have been dispersed by an 
auction, 
Who was the auctioneer? Why, Metaphysic herself." 

There need be as little mystery about the method of meta- 
physical philosophy as about the nature of metaphysics in gen- 
eral. How the " plain man " arrives at his fragmentary and 
theoretically unsatisfying, but more or less practically effective 
notions as to the nature of its realities, and as to the oneness 
of the world of his experience, the analysis of knowledge has 
already shown sufficiently. The origin, nature, and validity of 
the naive metaphysics of the physical and natural sciences, as 
well as the method which they employ, have also been indicated. 
But the method which criticism must employ is a deduction 
from the very nature of philosophy. Its metaphysical system 
aims to harmonize and interpret the assumptions and conclu- 
sions of the particular sciences with regard to the nature of 
real things, and real selves, and the actual relations and trans- 
actions existing between them. In a word, the method of meta- 
physics must be based on experience with concrete realities; it 
must follow with a docile and free critical spirit the lead of 
those sciences which deal with such realities; but it must tran- 



METAPHYSICS, AS A THEORY OF REALITY 161 

scend these sciences in its effort to reach a theory of the Being 
of the World that shall harmonize and interpret the truths 
•which they all proclaim. For — to quote again the pregnant 
sentence of Matthew Arnold: "We want first to know what 
being is." He who contributes anything to the deeper satis- 
faction of this want adds something essential to the higher wel- 
fare of humanity. For man, being rational, does not, and can- 
not " live by bread alone." The life of reason must live on the 
exercise and nourishment of reason. Thus the total interests 
of humanity demand a theory of reality which shall be, on the 
one hand, firmly founded in its cognitive experience, and on 
the other hand, well adapted to serve all its practical needs. 
Indeed, how men live and how men die, depends chiefly upon 
the character of their theory of reality and upon the manner of 
their holding it. 

What has given metaphysical philosophy an ill reputation 
among so-called practical men, as well as scientific experts, 
has oftener than otherwise been its tendency to deal with mere 
abstractions; to rise with a bound to speculative conclusions on 
the wings of these abstractions; and then to refuse considera- 
tions primarily derived from the concrete realities whose ex- 
istence constitutes that World, the " Being " of which meta- 
physics aims to know. What can man know about the Absolute, 
— that it is, not to say, what it is, — which is not known in and 
through the relative? The only obvious answer to this ques- 
tion is : " Nothing." To claim more is to substitute for knowl- 
edge the pretence of knowledge. Thus much, at least, the 
Kantian sceptical criticism of metaphysics as ontology has 
made perfectly clear. But the student of the theory of reality 
may regain his confidence by returning to the point of standing 
which he has reached after carefully threading his way through 
the confusions of the sceptical theory of knowledge. For him, 
the necessary forms of human cognition are no longer, as scep- 
ticism holds them to be, impotencies of the intellect; they are, 
the rather, potencies of reason. They are not insuperable bar- 



162 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

riers to a vision of reality ; they are insights into the very nature 
of reality. 

The traditional metaphysician — to adopt Hegel's figure of 
speech — is indeed apt to paint his entire picture in shades of 
gray (Grau in Grau) ; and this, as Hegel thinks, is because the 
artist has upon his pallette only the " abstract essence of the 
categories" (das ganz Abstracte der Begriffe). Let us, how- 
ever, endeavor to escape — if only partially — the charge of try- 
ing to depict the concrete variety of form, color, and relation, 
which undoubtedly belongs to the world of human experience, 
with the dullness and monotony of abstractions (layer of gray 
upon gray, or beside gray). This we may do by a close ques- 
tioning of some actually existing concrete thing. And any 
old, or new, " Thing " will do. Eor the mystery of real being 
(of " Thing-hood," if so convenient but uncouth a term be 
pardoned) is incorporated, quite fully enough to exhaust the 
most prolonged and acute analysis, in every humblest and least 
conspicuous example. A flower " in the crannied wall," a stone 
picked up by the wayside, a clod against which the toe strikes 
in the ploughed field, will do as well as a human organism, a 
jewel, or a fixed star. To this " Thing " we will put the fol- 
lowing question : What is it that you, the object of knowledge, 
are, which compels me to know you as not mere object of my 
knowledge, but as having an existence of your own? In other 
words: What are those characteristics which this particular 
thing possesses in common with every other thing, and which 
entitle it to be known as real, and so capable of taking its 
part in the actual transactions of a real world? 

The attempt to answer in the most naive and concrete man- 
ner an inquiry into the real nature, and the value for the world 
of actual events, of any individual thing, leads us at once to 
those conceptions which in their most abstract form, are the 
so-called categories of metaphysical philosophy. To try 
the issue with this one example; let it be a stone which I am 
striving to place on top of a wall. This stone is known to 



METAPHYSICS, AS A THEORY OF REALITY 163 

me as " in space " and as " occupying space." However I may 
have come, from the point of view of psychological theory, to 
localize and measure things (whether this power is wholly the 
result of experiences of mine, or whether things have some 
original quality or vague "bigness"), I know this stone as 
something real, and as actually located and measurable with 
reference to its own size and its spatial relations to other 
things. I know the same thing as also existing " in time " ; 
and I infer and believe in its continued existence in time, irre- 
spective of the time during which I am observing it. My pas- 
sionate conviction with respect to these spatial and temporal 
characteristics is endowed with all the qualities of an infallible 
knowledge. This thing, however, may be changed in position 
and in size ; for in order to adapt it to its uses as a part of the 
wall, the effecting of such changes is the very transaction I 
am striving to bring about. But I shall have to use " force " 
for this ; it will " cause " me a severe and perhaps painful 
strain as I cause it to break in pieces or to be hoisted entire 
to its place on the wall. And when I get it placed, although 
by the " action " of frost, or by some person's ruthless hands, it 
may subsequently be displaced (a transaction which may also 
be described by saying, " It has changed its place," or " Some- 
one has changed its place"), I positively know that it will not 
grow hands and feet, over-night or in hundreds of years, and 
so descend "of itself" from the wall, by its own two hands 
or on all its fours. Eor this would be to violate all manner 
of " laws " ; it would imply a change in its own " nature " 
which is absolutely forbidden by that larger Nature of which 
it is only a part. As a stone, it is " adapted to," and fulfills 
its " purpose " in part by being built into a wall with others 
of its own species or kind. It cannot be allowed to change itself 
arbitrarily; and then to undertake the fulfillment of purposes 
for which by its own nature and according to its proper legal 
relations to other things, it is in no respect adapted. 

In some such manner the plain man might rehearse his un^ 



164 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

taught metaphysics, or theory of reality, as applied to the 
" Thing-hood " of the stone. And if it were any other material 
existence, whose claim to reality he was substantiating in terms 
of knowledge, he could not depart in any essential way from a 
terminology which embodies the same conceptions. Nor would 
the metaphysics of the " scientist " — physicist, chemist, geolo- 
gist, or what not — differ essentially from that of the plain man. 
The scientific measurements of times and spaces would indeed 
be infinitely more refined and accurate; the scientific knowl- 
edge of the qualities, the possible or actual changes in the 
form and substance of the thing would be indefinitely more 
subtle and varied; the scientific grasp upon the laws regu- 
lating the changes and the relations of this thing to other 
things would be vastly more firm and comprehensive; science's 
descriptive history of the thing in the past, of the record of 
its life and development, would be, however tentative and 
doubtful, much more interesting and even amazing. But the 
man of science could neither transcend, nor contract, whether 
in number or in their applicability, just these same categories 
which the plain man would use. And any attempt on the part 
of science, either to misuse or to eliminate any of them, would 
most surely meet with defeat. For these are the forms which 
the cognition of things impresses upon things, in the belief 
that they are the forms of the real existence of things. Or, 
better said: These are the forms in which the experience of 
knowledge validates the real nature and actual behavior of 
things. 

Quality, Kelation, Change, Time, Space and Motion, Force 
and Causation, Quantity and Measure, Unity and Number, 
Form, Law, and Final Purpose, — such are the categories 
which, if we have enumerated them correctly and exhaustively, 
are given to all men in experience as the characteristics of 
each and every Thing which men know as real. They are all, 
as it were, present, or "immanent," and harmoniously opera- 
tive, in every single thing. They are there; they belong to 



METAPHYSICS, AS A THEORY OF REALITY 165 



the concrete reality. In experience the human mind becomes 
aware of them slowly, imperfectly, and one or two, or a few, 
at the same time, according to the wandering of the Blick- 
punlct of attention. Or it may with confidence infer them as 
existing in many real objects of which it has never had the 
experience of observing them, and of which it can never hope 
to have this experience. 

But when it is said that every real being is known as real, 
because it may be present in experience under this same variety 
of thought-forms, it is necessary at once to add a something 
more. For there also belongs to the reality of every being 
given in experience, somewhat more than is obvious to all 
thought-forms. What this somewhat more is, can only be 
realized when it is remembered that the activity in cognition 
is not mere thinking; and that when this activity takes the 
form of a self-consciousness which reveals to the Self most 
fully the essence, as it were, of its own being, it does not 
make the Self known to itself as a pure intellect going pas- 
sively through a series of thought-forms. Hence, it becomes 
in some sort a true picture of what the Self really is, when we 
say: It knows itself as having thoughts, but as being a will. 

It is at once noticeable that we apply these characteristics 
of reality to things in much the same naive but instructive 
way as that in which we apply them to ourselves. None of 
them is wholly identified with the reality of any one Thing; 
although every single real Thing is said to have, or to possess, 
each one of these characteristics in order that it may lay valid 
claim to be called real. Neither is the reality of any thing 
thought of as a mere and fortuitous aggregate or collection of 
all these characteristics; although, as we have seen, its thing- 
hood requires that it should manage to combine, or hold to- 
gether the possession of them all. For example, we do not say 
that the thing is any one of its several qualities ; we do not even 
consent to identify its real existence with the sum-total of these 
qualities. The qualities tell us what it is; and without knowl- 



166 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

edge of these qualities we should not even know that it really 
is. There are no unqualified things; but, then, the qualities 
are " of " the things, or they " belong to " the things. 
What now is meant by the " It " which has the quali- 
ties. In much the same way we seem to be compelled 
to think of the relations of things, — both those which are in- 
ternal and exist between the different parts and qualities of 
the same thing, and also those which exist between any par- 
ticular thing and a vast multitude of other things. Unrelated 
things are no-thing; and yet we are not completely satisfied 
with Lotze's celebrated maxim: "To be" (in reality) "is 
to be related." Things stand in relations; but they are not 
composed of relations or wholly to be identified, in respect to 
the reality of their existence, with the sum of the relations in 
which, at any particular time, they are found standing. The 
very essence of their " thinghood " requires that they should 
be able to enter into new relations. 

Still further in the same direction of an attempt to dis- 
cover the metaphysical meaning of the conceptions which are 
implicit in all human thinking, it is to be observed : All these 
qualities and relations of things are entered into and possessed 
by the things, under the conditions and limitations of space 
and time. Hence things may be measured and numbered; 
and on the basis of this seemingly simple datum of fact the 
most wonderful systems of so-called pure mathematics, or of 
mathematics applied to all sorts of things, are confidently 
erected. And the reasonings of science in reliance upon the 
verity, or reality, of this form of mental activity, are con- 
firmed by an ever-enlarging experience of things, in a way 
which only fails of being considered miraculous, because it is 
so supremely natural. The motions, changes, and forces ex- 
erted by and between things, are themselves measurable; but 
it is still the things which undergo, or effect, the movements 
and the changes, and which exert, or become subject to the 
exertion of, their inherent forces. Thus, with marvellous 



METAPHYSICS, AS A THEORY OF REALITY 167 

systems of obvious or subtile and concealed actions and reac- 
tions, the real and living world is ever changing and recon- 
structing itself anew. For although the things are not to be 
identified with the laws which they obey, — and, indeed, law 
itself is only an abstraction from the more general and regu- 
lar forms of the action and reaction of the real things: yet 
all things do conform to law, and this conformity is the condi- 
tion, so to say, of their being permitted to form a part of, and 
to play their part in, the One World. To this unity of plan, 
however vaguely known and imperfectly conceived it may 
always remain to the mind of man, every individual thing 
must somehow be adapted in order that it may fulfill its man- 
ifold purposes in the same world. 

We are accustomed to use the word " It " as a convenient 
summary for the subject of all those categories, or character- 
istics, the possession of which is necessary to establish the claim 
to reality of each particular Thing. In this one word tc It," 
however, lurks the entire mystery of existence. This fact has 
led to the mystical and abstract language which metaphysics 
has found it necessary or convenient to employ in order to 
express its unclear but undisturbed conviction in the reality 
of the subject of all the qualities, relations, and changes, which 
are observed or inferred to be taking place in the world of 
things. This abstract conception of the Subject-Thing, of 
It, of that which has the qualities, which stands in the rela- 
tions, which undergoes or effects the changes, etc., it has em- 
bodied in such words and phrases, as " Substance/' " Bearer * 
(Trager — that is, of states), metaphysical or " ontological 
subject," "real being," etc. And at once, of course, all forms 
of phenomenalism, or of the sceptical denial of the possibility 
of metaphysics, have asked in a sneering way the question: 
"What then becomes of the subject-thing when you abstract 
all its qualities, relations, and changes, both in time and in 
space? To which question only one answer is possible or even 
conceivable : " At once it becomes no-Thins:" A better form 



168 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

of the same answer would be: Without all these it could not 
be, or be conceived of as being, any real Thing. But the re- 
turn question is just as inevitable and much more difficult 
to answer. For the searcher after this metaphysical mystery 
which lies in the very word " It," and which seems to be no 
mystery at all to the consciousness of the " plainest " of men, 
may renew his claims by starting from precisely the same 
standpoint of universal experience, and by making precisely 
the same appeal to this experience for the coveted answer. 
Why do you, in ordinary conversation, and as well in your 
scientific terminology, talk about things in the way to imply 
6uch a real subject for all the qualities, relations, and changes, 
in the particular things and in the world of things? What is 
the meaning of this " It," as you employ it ? Why do you 
speak of " that-which," " whose-is," and pride yourself upon 
the ability to determine more precisely and comprehensively 
than the plain man can, the qualities, relations, changes, — in 
space and in time, — that are " of " the real things. 

And now when we hark back to a certain point reached in 
the recent hunt after a satisfying theory of knowledge, we get 
a suggestion, at least, of where to look in order to discover 
the hiding-place of this mystery which confronts at the very 
threshold any attempt to discover a satisfying theory of reality. 
Is there any one of the so-called categories which may be 
connected with the subject-Thing, with this It of which all is 
affirmed, by a special kind of copula? Does any one of them, 
at least at first blush, seem to be nearer of kin to the very 
substance, to the real essence, to the "bone and marrow," of 
the Thing? Such a predicate, it might then be said, is It; 
instead of being content with saying that It has such a predi- 
cate, or that such a predicate belongs to It. At present let 
the experiment be made with the category — or rather with the 
complex conception — of causation. And surely, it seems to 
satisfy both the demands of the plain man's experience, as 
well as the severer demands of the particular sciences, to say 



METAPHYSICS, AS A THEORY OF REALITY 169 

that things are really causes; whereas it does not seem satis- 
factory to express the datum of experience if the uncouth 
statement is made that causation is a specific quality pos- 
sessed, as are color, size, weight, etc., by the particular thing. 
Indeed, both physics and psychology unite to resolve all these 
specific qualities, as far as they belong to any particular thing, 
into the various forms of the causal activities of the thing. To 
do something to other things, and to have something done to 
it by other things, would seem then to be the very essence of 
the reality which is ascribed to all things that are causes in 
the actual transactions of the One World. 

The variety of ways in which particular things are causes 
determines their qualities, and explains the changes in them- 
selves and other things, under the infinite variety of relations 
which their causal activity assumes. This is as true of atoms, 
and electrons, and ions, as it is of the more massive substances 
to which, as subjects, are assigned the more easily observable 
qualities, changes and relations, of ordinary things. When 
the causes are thought of as operative in space, and under 
measurable relations of space, and in degrees that are also 
measurable by movements in space, it is necessary to regard 
the things as " occupying space," or as " posited " in space ; 
and in somewhat similar manner, things are known as causes 
operative in time and during longer or shorter times. 

The analysis of the nature and meaning of the cognitive act 
gives the clue to the origin, nature, and meaning, of the con- 
ception of things as causes. In every cognitive act, the knower 
is a will, and knows itself as a will; in every cognitive act 
whose object is some Thing, the knower knows that thing as 
actually or conceivably being, what by self-consciousness he 
knows himself to be, — namely, a cause, as will, but not his will ; 
an expression to him of another will than his own. Such, at any 
rate, is the preliminary view of the solution of this problem, 
which may be defended both by the psychology of knowledge, 
and also by the analysis of that conception of reality which 



170 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

belongs to every meanest thing. That there would be 
no real selves and no real things for us, were we not made 
aware to ourselves and they made aware to us, as causes, act- 
ing and reacting, reciprocally determining the changes in the 
states and relations of one another, may be asserted as a pro- 
logue to a system of metaphysics, which does not easily admit 
of denial. 



CHAPTER IX 

NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SO-CALLED 
" CATEGORIES " 

There has been from time immemorial a difference of opin- 
ion as to the nature and the number of the necessary forms of 
human knowledge; and as well as to the precise way in which 
philosophy ought to discover and to criticize them. The scep- 
tical and agnostic positions toward this problem of meta- 
physics have already been sufficiently discussed. It ought, how- 
ever, to be recalled in this connection that any proposal to criti- 
cize the categories cannot properly imply that it is possible 
to look on them with a critical eye from a wholly outside point 
of view. In criticizing them, the mind is compelled to accept 
them; in criticizing the criticism of others, the mind employs 
them yet again. It is the business of systematic metaphysics, 
in spite of the inherent difficulties, to do what human minds 
well can toward harmonizing the different, and sometimes seem- 
ingly conflicting claims of those forms of all cognition; and, 
also, to expound and amplify their significance as bearing upon 
the ultimate aim of metaphysics, which is to frame a tenable, 
consistent, and satisfying theory of reality. 

But how many, and precisely what, are those forms of human 
cognition, of man's way of knowing all things and all selves as 
real, which deserve to be classed among the categories? In 
his investigations into the nature of human thought, of argu- 
ment, and of proof, Aristotle, the founder of logic in its Occi- 
dental development, constructed an elaborate doctrine of con- 
cepts. The fixing of concepts or definition ( bpujfioz ), he 
held, rests in part on direct knowledge, which must be empha- 
sized by induction (so Zeller). In order to attain a correct 

171 



172 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

and exhaustive conception of any generic object, — the defini- 
tion of a class, — the mind must proceed logically. Since there 
are various points of view from which things may be contem- 
plated, and since there is no one concept which comprehends 
all things under one head, it is necessary to discover the " main 
classes of assertions " which men, knowingly, make about things. 
Aristotle, in the passage where he gives the most definite treat- 
ment to the determining of these " assertive conceptions," the 
so-called " categories " (Karyroplae), enumerates ten. They 
are the following: Substance, quantity, quality, relation, where, 
when, place, possession, activity, passivity. " He is," says 
Zeller, " convinced of the completeness of this scheme, but no 
definite principle is to be found for its origin." It is the cate- 
gories, however, which form the subject for investigation in the 
" first philosophy," or metaphysics, of Aristotle. 

In other enumerations of the fundamental forms of all hu- 
man conceiving of things, the great Greek thinker does not ad- 
here strictly to this list of ten. It is evident to the most 
superficial criticism that these ten are not by any means all of 
the same rank; neither have they all the same value, whether 
for a theory of knowledge, or for a metaphysics which shall be 
a tenable theory of reality. The first four are the more im- 
portant; among them the category of Substance stands pri- 
mary and supreme. For in it is concealed the mystery of ex- 
istence, — as has already been discovered by an analysis of the 
terms under which every real Thing is known. To be " sub- 
stantial " and to be real are, in popular language, the same. 

To the excessive zeal for a four-sided regularity, which 
amounted to a delusive " pedagogical primness," of Kant, the 
looseness and vacillation of Aristotle with regard to the number 
and significance of the categories, seemed intolerable. In mak- 
ing out his own list, however, Kant adhered in the main to 
the divisions of the Aristotelian doctrine of the judgment. 
Only he added two more to the Aristotelian catalogue of the 
necessary forms of judging faculty. Thus he thought he had 



NATURE OF SO-CALLED " CATEGORIES " 173 

secured a demonstrable list of the universal and external forms 
of the functioning of all human judgment in objective cogni- 
tion. A table; four classes; three in a class; three times four, 
i. e., twelve, and no more or less, — such in number are the 
Kantian categories. 

It is not necessary to follow the discussion of this subject 
between Aristotle and Kant, or between Kant and the most 
recent contribution to its settlement, in order to show how 
uncertain are both the method of a priori demonstration in 
dependence on an abstract logical scheme, and also the method 
of a sort of off-hand picking-up of the categories. The diffi- 
culty accompanying either of these methods — or, indeed, the 
use of any method — for the construction of a complete list of 
the categories, is chiefly due to these two facts of man's ex- 
perience with them. And, first, however we may wish to define 
their essential nature we can neither assign to them all the 
same rank nor the same essential significance for the growth 
of human knowledge. We cannot prevent their overlapping 
and mixing up, as it were, one with another. When the effort 
is made to harmonize them, by bringing them under the terms 
of any abstract principle, the effort seems to add to this con- 
fusion; although every concrete existence is, essentially con- 
sidered, a harmonious realization of them all. For example, 
the category of relation appears to dominate, or mix in with, 
all the others. Spaces, times, qualities, quantities, notions and 
all kinds of changes, forces, forms, and laws — all are related 
in manifold ways. Only by the actualization of these relations 
is the World made One, out of an infinity of related beings, 
conditions, and activities. If it is held that the mystery of real 
being is concealed in the word Substance, or that the essence 
of every Thing consists in its being a Cause, it is necessary to 
add that qualities are known only as related to substances, and 
causes only as related, on the one hand, to their causes, and, on 
the other, to their effects. Even relations may be related. 
Indeed, the whole world is known to science and to ordinary 



174 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

experience as made up of real beings, composed of related ele- 
ments, and always in relation, as wholes, to other real beings. 
In saying this we are not indulging ourselves in abstractions 
of an amusing or startling character and calculated to in- 
crease the popular disgust with metaphysics; we are trying to 
express in the language of every-day life what every " plain 
man" knows to be true of every thing of which he has daily 
experience. 

A second difficulty arises, whenever the attempt is made to 
enumerate and describe the categories, from the nature of the 
relation which they sustain to human experience. This rela- 
tion is such that in the very effort to think about them clearly, 
— not to say describe them in detail or define them with com- 
mendable brevity and accuracy, — the conception of each one 
seems to involve at once many, if not all of the others. Indeed, 
this belongs to their very nature as categories, and to the nor- 
mal relation which they all sustain to experience. If it were 
possible to isolate any one of these forms of cognition, or to 
reduce it to some other form, then it would properly lose its 
place altogether among the so-called categories. If time and its 
relations, for example, could be reduced to space and it's rela- 
tions, then the one of the two which submitted to this reduc- 
tion, would drop out of the list of the absolutely necessary 
forms of the cognition of things. If all relations were those of 
quality, and there were no relations of number, then, of course, 
there could be no reality to which mathematics could be ap- 
plied. Or, the rather — to turn the statement about — then there 
would be no mathematics, because there would be no things to 
measure and enumerate, — in fact, no things at all. 

From this it follows that none of the categories can be dis- 
pensed with in any attempt to describe what his experience re- 
veals to man with regard to the essential nature of every con- 
crete reality. But the fact that the validity of these forms of 
knowledge is assumed, or presupposed, as of necessity in every 
cognitive experience does not contradict the other truth of 



NATURE OF SO-CALLED " CATEGORIES " 175 

fact, that they are also all illustrated and confirmed by the 
growth of knowledge. With the growth of knowledge, in the 
individual and in the race, comes an increasing clearness and 
an enlarging confidence in the validity, for reality, of the human 
way of knowing the world. And here is the supreme example 
of the truth that man knows the real world — that it is, and 
what it is — not by sitting apart from it and reflecting (if, in- 
deed, such a thing were possible), but by living in the midst of 
it and by actual dealings with its concrete realities. For the 
growth of knowledge is like that of a tree in a soil which is en- 
riched not only by the gifts of the surrounding earth and the 
over-arching heavens, but even by its own foliage and dead 
branches. 

The further work of metaphysical philosophy with the so- 
called categories should consist in the effort to interpret their 
significance with a view to establishing a theory as to the essen- 
tial nature of all that is called Real; — or, in other words, an 
attempt to understand the Being of the World as it is mani- 
fest to the human mind through its growing knowledge of the 
nature and relations of the concrete realities of this One World. 
Here, in this problem, as in all of its problems, philosophy 
strives by reflective thinking to rise to the Universal from 
firm points of standing in the fields of the particular 
sciences. 

If now speculation keeps close to the truths of human ex- 
perience with concrete real existences, it may make three pre- 
liminary observations of a metaphysical character. 1 

The, as yet, imperfect analysis of the categories, considered 
as those fundamental and irreducible forms of knowledge 
under which all men recognize the nature of concrete realities 
— real selves and real things — establishes these truths of uni- 
versal experience. First : " Reality is always, primarily con- 

iThe next following pages, when quoted, are from the author's 
"A Theory of Reality" (Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1899), where a 
detailed treatment of the categories is given, pp. 57-393. 



176 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

sidered, a datum of fact; it is, first of all, that which is known 
as being in sense-perception or self-consciousness." In every 
single cognitive experience of every human being, reality is 
a datum, is given, is there; and it is present with all that 
force to compel conviction which the satisfactions of the in- 
tellect and the exigencies of the practical life demand. From 
this immediate datum of experience, all our reasoned knowl- 
edge about things, remote in time and space, issues forth; and 
to it, for the testing of its validity, it is ever compelled to re- 
turn again. Second: "Reality is always an actor or agent. 
Dead and do-less things are not real. We may, indeed, make a 
sort of abstraction, of all particular, conceivable forms of acting 
and doing, and may then try in imagination to convert this 
bare potentiality into a real existence. But this very poten- 
tiality itself is like a slumbering lion — acting in dream-life, 
and ready, at the first prick of the stimulus, to leap forth in 
the full strength of its awakening. It is the half-consciousness 
of this truth which makes much of the physics of the day so 
obscure and provoking, and yet so tenacious in its conception 
of c potential energy/ And is not chemistry virtually com- 
pelled — and biology as well — to pack the atoms full of some- 
times latent and sometimes active potencies? But what are 
masses, molecules, atoms, ions, electrons, in reality, when they 
have wholly ceased to be actors or agents; when in respect of 
the entire sum of all their qualities and changing relations, 
they are merely potential? Just nothing at all." Really to be 
in space, to have energy of position, or as it is significantly 
said, " to occupy space," they must continue to be self -ex- 
istent causes, or centres of force, manifoldly related in an 
active manner, with other self-existent causes, or centres of 
force. But, third : " Reality is always connection according 
to some law." And in order to constitute a valid claim to 
be real, this connection cannot be one of thoughts, or ideas 
only; it must be a connection established in fact, — a con- 
nection, recognized indeed, or reasoned out, by the mind in 



NATURE OF SO-CALLED " CATEGORIES " 177 

terms of order and so-called law, but a connection immanent 
in, or actually existent between, the things themselves. 

If now, in view of these truths of fact, the question is raised, 
how they are made possible and made full of meaning, some 
additional clue may be obtained to a tenable and illuminat- 
ing theory of reality. Let us in a more general and of neces- 
sity somewhat more abstract way, endeavor to realize what is 
implied in this " harmonizing of the categories " by every con- 
crete real existence. We may then, perhaps, hope to approach 
more confidently the ultimate metaphysical problem : How 
shall the Being of the World, be interpreted in the large; — 
and in such manner as to justify the growth of that knowl- 
edge of the race which affirms it to be an intelligible and or- 
derly system of real existences — of selves and of things? 

The plain man, the man of science, the reflective thinker, — 
all believe in some kind of a real world. Something is real; 
such is the metaphysical datum which all knowers, from every 
point of view, accept as given in an irresistible way, in every 
cognitive experience. By the growth of ordinary experience, 
but much more richly and convincingly by the development 
of the particular sciences, a kind of ideal unity, a oneness of 
order and law, is ascribed to this " Something-that-is-real." 
All individual selves and things are known the better, the more 
knowledge grows, as actually existing in, and as contributing 
to, the reality of this One World. Let this larger and compre- 
hensive Something be called by the term, " Being of the 
World." It is a vague term, designedly vague. Therefore, 
metaphysics desires to do something more toward clearing-up 
and interpreting its original vagueness. In this effort, which 
is commendable whether it can be made successful or not, 
let a return be made again to the point of view from which it 
became necessary to notice the particularity, the difference in 
values, and yet the necessary nature and harmony of all the 
so-called categories. 

" The truth may be enforced by taking as a point of start- 



178 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ing any one of the so-called categories: Being in Space shall 
we say? But by being in space — really and not merely in 
imagination — we must understand some particular Thing occu- 
pying some particular portion of space. For it is not space as 
a mere abstraction, which is to be considered, but space as a 
form of knowledge, — that is, space as it is known, in applica- 
tion to real things. But nothing can be known, or thought of, 
as really in space, which does not define itself as ' here ' rather 
than ' there.' Its being at all in space, as all real things 
actually are, involves its particularity; to be nowhere in par- 
ticular in space, but everywhere in general, or to be all over 
space, is to be unknowable and unthinkable in terms of this 
category (The conception of ether as a continuum filling all 
space is not in the least exempted from this same necessity of 
its being known at all). But this particularity which every 
real Thing has, as a i being in space,' involves its relation to 
other beings that are also in space." 

To be a particular Thing related to other real beings in 
space, implies the possibility of movement, of changes in this 
spatial relation; and so of measurable changes in the size and 
distances of particular things. Thus the path which lies open be- 
tween the categories leads at once from the thought of being re- 
lated in space to the thought of change. And a particular, 
recognizable set of qualities is necessary in order that any 
thing may be known as the same real Thing, although it has 
moved and so changed its position and relations in space. All 
that identification of realities, personal and impersonable, which 
makes not only science possible but any real living practicable, 
depends upon some at least relatively permanent possession of 
a set, or complex of qualities, in which the particular character 
of every real being is defined and conserved. If every thing 
changed indefinitely, not only science, but business and society 
would be impossible. But as to the extent to which the 
changes of position, relations in space, measurable spatial qual- 
ities, and other qualities, can take place, and yet the particular 



NATURE OF SO-CALLED " CATEGORIES " 179 

Thing or individual Self maintain its claim to a real existence, 
there is no test possible except that of experience. And this 
test in most cases of the different classes of things is the test 
of practical expediency. The same remark applies to the 
grouping, or aspects, of the particular Thing which affords the 
means for both practical and scientific identification. For 
the mathematician or the tradesman, the categories of quality 
and number are most impressive. For the student of physics 
and chemistry, for the machinist and manufacturer, the same 
categories with the added conceptions of causation and force. 
The way in which every particular thing attempts to main- 
tain its real existence in a world of particular things by mani- 
festing the peculiar complex of qualities and forces which en- 
able men to identify it, leads the thought irresistibly to the 
actuality of order and law, as immanent in the Being of the 
"World. Xo particular thing succeeds forever in accomplish- 
ing this task. It maintains its particular existence in reality, 
only for a time, and for that time only fitfully and irregularly. 
The conception of the older chemistry and physics was that 
of an indestructible and eternally unchangeable atom, out of 
the combination of which destructible and changeable particu- 
lar things were constantly being made. Even atoms are now 
thought of as arising and passing away. But to preserve the 
Being of the "World from collapsing in ruin, or from relapsing 
into chaos, the changes in relations, quantities, and qualities, 
of the particular things must observe some order, must conform 
to some law. This is as true of the explosions of masses of 
dynamite, or of the earthquake that wrecks Messina, as it is 
of the movements of the planets in the solar system, or 
of the combinations and separations of oxygen and hydrogen 
in the making and dissipation of a few drops of water. But 
it has already been seen, in the attempt to expose the meaning 
of the logical principle of identity and non-contradiction, when 
applied to the knowledge of real Things: A may change into 
A 1 , A 2 , A 3 . . . A n ; but it must not change into B 1 , B 2 , 



180 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

B 3 . . . 5°. And yet for all particular things, — we repeat — 
only experience can determine the precise character of the 
series of changes through which any particular Thing may run. 
The complex of so-called laws which regulate these series we, 
in our ignorance, call the " nature " of the thing. 

The Being of the World, then, so far as it can be compre- 
hended in its totality, is a system of particular beings each one 
of which gets its reality in the system, under limitations of 
time and space, by a sort of participation in the categories. 
It is a particular real, by virtue of its being one among the 
infinite number of realities which come into existence, and pass 
out of existence, within the Unity of the One World. To turn 
this statement about: The Unity which a systematic meta- 
physics discovers in Eeality is, so to speak, the bond which 
brings all the particular concrete realities into an orderly and 
law-abiding system. And now the inquiry would seem to be: 
What is the nature of such a bond as is competent to secure 
the unity that we know belongs to the one real world of human 
experience ? 

The application of such words as Bond, Connection, Sys* 
tern, Unity, — all of which involve ideals of order and law, — 
to the entire collection of particular real beings, both selves 
and things, suggests a further advance in the problem of meta- 
physics. For these words imply that all these particular real 
beings which constitute the individuals for this Universal, what- 
ever be their natures, somehow actively co-operate in that larger 
Nature which includes them all, and which must be attributed 
to the Being of the World. Some Force, or Causative In- 
fluence, unifies and systematizes the particular beings; and to 
unify or systematize is to connect together under the terms of 
some Idea. Now it is true that all the achievements of the 
particular sciences, since man began to observe, to experiment, 
and to think, have by no means mastered the intricacies or dis- 
closed the mysteries of this system of real beings. It is even 
true that individual beings and single events — however numer- 



NATURE OF SO-CALLED " CATEGORIES " 181 

ous or frequently repeated those beings and events may be — 
still resist explanation in terms that apply to the system in 
general. To speak in abstract terms, these realities appear thus 
far to refuse to conform to the ideals which science believes it 
has acquired the right to apply to the world as a whole. Their 
natures run, in some respects at least, contrary to Nature in 
the large. On the other hand, it is only as they are connected 
with or bound to other realities, of whose law-abiding natures 
man has some assured knowledge, that these beings of "the 
contrary mind/' these events which constitute exceptions to 
the known order and the accepted laws of their fellow be- 
ings, can become known to man at all. Without conform- 
ing to the laws of light, they could not be known to man by 
sight; without conforming to the principle of gravitation, 
their weight could not be measured or calculated, etc., etc. 
And without being possessed of all the categories, they could 
not be known, or imagined, or thought about, as real. It is 
also a most significant fact of the historical development of all 
the sciences that they grow chiefly by noting, accepting, and 
explaining the apparent exceptions to those previously exist- 
ing conceptions, hypotheses, and accepted laws. Thus a system 
of knowledges that corresponds better to the system of realities 
is obtained. But more and more tenaciously does the human 
mind, not only entertain as a pleasing conceit but insist upon 
as a presupposition supported ever more confidently by the 
growth of experience, the conception of an infinite number of 
particular beings somehow connected into the Unity of One 
World. And no more senseless trifling with the most assured 
results of human experience is possible than is involved in the 
attempt to minimize the content, and depreciate the value, of 
this conception of the World's Unhty. Scientifically and philo- 
sophically considered, a " pluralistic universe " is an absurdity. 
Among the categories there are three which are involved in 
the most important ways in man's expanding conception of 
the Being of the World. These are the categories of Relation, 



182 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

Causation, and Law. As an infinity of agents, or real causes, 
actually related, under effectual ideas, or laws, the world-sys- 
tem of things and selves is constituted. Particular realities 
that are agents, or causes, related, not merely subjectively, or 
in man's processes of thinking, but actually, according to ideas 
that are effectual, — such are the prime conditions of the en- 
vironment of which human beings are a part. As realizing to 
the full these conditions, the Universe is known to the mind 
of man. 

What, then, is it " to be really related " ? Of all metaphysi- 
cal inquiries, this is in some respects the most quizzical and 
the most puzzling. The saying which has been attributed to 
different authors in philosophy is indeed not without signifi- 
cance: "Belation is the mother of all the categories/' Mani- 
festly we cannot hope to define, or even to describe this con- 
ception which underlies all knowledge, without making use of 
it in a form already sufficiently clear. For all definition and 
description are stated in judgments; and all judgments are 
achievements of relating faculty. From the subjective point 
of view, then, since all knowledge involves judgment, and all 
judging is relating, there can be no object of knowledge which 
is not related — both to the knower and to other objects. But 
it is not with the theory of judgment or of knowledge that we 
are now concerned. Theories of knowledge which would cut 
knowledge off from reality, or reduce the categories to merely 
subjective forms, have already been finally rejected. They 
cannot be taken back into our confidence. And to admit the 
subjective origin of the category of relation does not explain 
satisfactorily its title to be called "the mother of all the cate- 
gories." 

The metaphysical formula, or ontological doctrine, which cor- 
responds to what has already been said concerning the subjective 
origin of relation, may be stated as follows: All things 
are known to be actually related. Eeal things stand to one 
another in actual relations, and not merely in relations of 



NATURE OF SO-CALLED " CATEGORIES " 183 

thought culminating in judgment. These actual relations are 
of two sorts; relations to the knower as objects of knowledge, 
and relations to one another as existent together in the space 
and time of the One World. As to the actuality of one of 
these two sorts of relations, it would seem that no scepticism 
could be complete. That the object is actually related to the 
subject, in every completed act of knowledge, it is impossible 
to deny. The actualizing of this relation is the fact of knowl- 
edge itself. If, however, the actuality of this relation, and the 
real nature of the two beings thus related, is confined to the 
time and the content of the bare fact of knowledge, — as the ex- 
treme theory of subjectivism would have us believe, — then knowl- 
edge is not only vitiated at the start, but is rendered void of 
truth and absurd. Then there is no real science; then there are 
no foundations for the ethical and social order. For science, 
and morality, and the social order, require the actual exist- 
ence of other selves, with whom the individual Ego may come 
into intellectual, ethical, and social relations. "When this re- 
quirement is once admitted; then actually existent relations 
between real beings are also admitted. And if the distinction 
between truth and error be held vital in the commerce between 
different intellects; then the distinction between merely sub- 
jective relations and actual relations becomes a matter of fact. 
That is to say, it has become matter of fact that the intellect 
of A either does, or does not, relate B and C to itself, and to 
each other, as A, B and C are actually related. 

Nor can the claims of this distinction (i. e., between 
merely subjective relations and the actual relations of real 
beings) be arrested at the present point. For if knowers were, 
by their knowing activity to create all actual relations, and 
if things were not themselves actually related; then these 
knowers would belong to a world entirely apart from the world 
of things. Reality must, therefore, be conceived of as actually a 
system of relations. And all attempts to sink the actuality of 
the relations in an abstract conception of some unrelated, and 



184 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

therefore, unknown and unknowable Being of the World, work 
the same destruction to man's knowledge as that which is 
wrought by a thorough-going subjectivism. To this thought 
there will be need to return when considering the use which 
philosophy has often made of such conceptions as are hidden 
in the terms : " The Absolute/' " The World-Ground/' " The 
Unknowable," etc. 

In the system, or unity of the world, things are therefore 
really related, and not merely related by human imagination 
of them, or thought about them. The World is known — not 
merely imagined or thought about, — as a system of real beings, 
actually related. In other words, " It " is known as self -re- 
lated and not merely as having its relations forced upon it by 
man. This is not very far from saying that really to be re- 
lated is really to be as I know myself to be — a systematic and 
unitary thought-being. Or, to go still further and say: A 
System of Eelations, conceived of as a totality and complete 
in itself, can only be actualized in terms of a Self. To this 
conclusion, at least in a tentative and anticipatory way, we 
have argued ourselves into assent, somewhat as follows : " The 
entire collection of concrete real beings — things and selves, ac- 
tually known or only ideally conceivable — is known or con- 
ceived of as m^er-related. Only thus can any one of these real 
beings be known; only thus can the collection be conceived of 
as a system, as constituting One World. What now must this 
category (namely, that of c Eelation ') mean, when we yield 
to the compulsion which the inherent constitution of all hu- 
man knowledge imposes upon us, and apply it to the collec- 
tion of beings — to the One World. Nothing different from 
what we have already found it to mean. For the categories 
are not to be threatened or coaxed. They do not change their 
nature, when applied to the Nature of the World — not even 
if these words be spelled with capital letters. Neither do they 
bow to the demands of the mind that aspires altogether to 
escape their limitations, and begins to talk of 'the Absolute,' 



NATURE OF SO-CALLED " CATEGORIES " 185 

or of God, in terms to which, these limitations necessarily apply. 
On the one hand, then, we are justified in affirming the Self- 
like character of the conception which we apply to that Being 
of the World, in which they all ' live and move and have 
their being/ " 

Man's point of view from which to know each concrete being 
as related to others, and as well from which to construct a 
theory of reality that shall be statable in terms of knowledge is, 
of course, u anthropomorphic." From this point of view of 
the Self, the entire System of Relations must be regarded as 
having a Unity analogous to that which the Self knows itself 
to have ; all relations appear as alike interior to the System and 
yet as actualized by the related members of the System. But, 
on the other hand, this Self-like Being of the World as a Sys- 
tem of Actualized Relations is not a mere ideal; much less is 
it an unauthorized and unintelligible conceit. For an actual 
system of relations, such as constitute the Unity of the World, 
can only exist within such a Reality as combines all the powers 
of an active intelligence, and is thus a living and unifying 
rational Will. This, essentially considered, is what we know 
a Self really to be. 

In saying this we have doubtless overstepped our data, so 
far as they exist in the bare " brute fact " that the real things 
of the world are known to man only as actually related within 
the system of relations which he finds by experience to obtain 
everywhere. This over-stepping is in part, however, due to the 
very nature of the category of relation itself. Or rather, it is 
due to the truth that the world's system of related beings can- 
not be known as a mere system of relations. We say, u can- 
not be known," — however it might be imagined or thought. 
It is true that I am at liberty, if I pay no regard to the real 
facts and actual events of which the race is having- a continual 
experience, to imagine a quite different system of relations 
from that which exists in this world of ours. I can break the 
bond which Reality has imposed upon the different members 



186 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

of the really existent system, and can substitute for it some 
bond which shall be only my own idea of how things might be, 
or my own ideal of how things ought to be, in order to make a 
better world than that which actually exists. This wilful 
effort of mine could doubtless set into space, and construct as 
co-existent or sequent in time, a very different from the real 
collection of material masses and of self-conscious selves. Go 
to, now: The solar system shall be built "on the square"; 
its bodies shall no longer be planets, for they shall not wan- 
der by elliptical orbits in space; and thinking souls shall not 
be encumbered with bodies, but shall fly among the spheres 
with inconceivable velocity and subsist on the violet rays. 
Perhaps, I may be able to construct a system of perfectly 
statical relations in space, and of unchangeable relations in 
time, — although this would certainly be more difficult. In 
the latter case, however, my imagined world would be a dead 
world, and in fact no real world at all; and in the former 
case, it would be not wholly dead and lacking any principle 
of motion, change, or life, but largely if not wholly unlike our 
known real world. 

Again the mystery of real existence comes to the front and 
demands renewed attention. Particular things cannot be real — ■ 
we found reason for saying in another place (see p. 170) — 
unless they are causes, centers of forces expressing themselves 
according to what is called the nature of the particular Thing. 
And now there appears reason for saying that these particular 
things cannot be united into a system unless some adequate 
Cause, or forceful Center of compulsion for their ever-chang- 
ing mutual relations, can be found. Causal Unity, a unifying 
Force, is, therefore, a necessary demand for the realization of a 
World-System. Merely imagining, or planning, by an infin- 
itely wise mind would never result in an infinite number of 
real things uniting to make One World. 

" It is not possible longer to suppress a momentous truth 
which lies just below the surface of all the more superficial of 



NATURE OF SO-CALLED " CATEGORIES " 187 

the categories; and which has been slumbering in the very 
bosom of the mother of them all, — the category of relation. 
The truth appears the moment that an endeavor is made to 
apply this category to the exigencies of a desire to account for 
the observed unity in the scheme of things. The particular 
sciences help themselves out by explaining the partial unifica- 
tions which they discover, through attributing them to some 
one kind of Force. 1 There is, for example, the force of gravity, 
the force of electricity, the force of light, etc. And the most 
magnificent and persistent efforts are also made to unify these 
different forces by bringing them into quantitative relations 
under the terms of a universal dynamics. What the physico- 
chemical sciences are trying to accomplish by the methods 
of observation and experiment, as is their right and their duty 
to do, — just that, the metaphysical theory of reality finds to 
be hinted at, if not fully disclosed, in the very attempt to 
apply these universal forms of human cognition to the Being 
of the World considered in its totality as a system of particu- 
lar beings. Each one of these categories, and especially the 
mother of them all, has given token of the intimate presence 
of a yet more spiritual and profoundly influential conception." 
For example, it was found that Qualities are neither known 
nor conceivable apart from something that is said " to have " 
or " to exercise " the qualities ; and this vague " something," 
when questioned, gave back an unmistakable echo of a concep- 
tion of Force in reserve, as it were, within the very depths of 
every particular being. Again, when Becoming and the vari- 
ous forms of Change were considered, it appeared that some ac- 
tive principle must always control the becoming, and thus ac- 
count for the origin and character of every particular change. 
This principle of " a control of change " hints at the same con- 
ception of force. Relations, to be sure, sometimes seem so 

iHere, as throughout the discussions of the following chapters, 
this word is used in its more vague and metaphysical, rather than 
strictly scientific signification. 



188 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

calm, statical, and impassive, that they at least would not suffer 
if all forms of the manifestation of force were removed from 
the world. But at once we are reminded that the mental act 
of establishing relations, whether by observation or by argu- 
ment, is about the most energetic thing which a human will 
can accomplish. Forceful, pre-eminent, is the mind that seizes 
and works out the most complex and subtle relations amongst 
the "stuffs" of its sensuous experience. And some objective 
relations unmistakably demand force for their establishment 
and their continuance or their change. Such are all relations, 
for example, of tension, strain, attraction, repulsion, suspen- 
sion, etc., in physics; and all the ideal relations of cause and 
effect, means and end, influencing and being influenced, in 
the social world. Moreover, since no actual relations are per- 
fectly statical and unchanging, the presence of force must be 
recognized in the midst of them all. 

Finally, the conception of a differentiating and unifying 
force seems necessary in order to complete the actualization 
of the categories of time and space. For no real Thing can 
be " in space " without " occupying space " ; and nothing with- 
out energy in-itself, so to say, can occupy space. So, too, 
things do not follow each other " in time " as mere unconnected 
sequences. They are, on the contrary, connected together as 
causes and effects in the time-series: and were not this so, 
the momently past world would have no influence over the 
world of the present moment; and the momently present would 
have no influence over the world of to-morrow, or even of the 
next moment. Such, however, would be an imaginary, or 
merely logically connected world; it certainly would not be 
the One Real World, as man knows it actually to exist in the 
time-series of its manifold events. 

Now, what has just been said amounts to committing meta- 
physics at once to a position, toward the attainment and firmer 
hold upon which, science has for centuries slowly been working 
its way. A dynamical view must be substituted for a merely 



NATURE OF SO-CALLED " CATEGORIES " 189 

statical view of the Nature of Reality, of the Being of the 
World. For all the universal and necessary forms under which 
man knows the World show but the surface of its nature, 
until this truth is recognized: The Being of the World is a 
Unity of Force. 

But the phrase " unity of force," — as employed by many 
(notably, by Mr. Spencer) — has no assignable meaning until 
it is further interpreted in terms of a living experience. And 
psychology points unmistakably to its true and only meaning- 
full interpretation. The experience out of which the concep- 
tion of Force arises is that which I have when I will to 
effect a change, and have my deed of will accompanied or fol- 
lowed by feelings of effort and resistance, the cause of which 
I, either by observance or inference, locate in something other 
than myself. In other words — to repeat a now familiar phrase 
— it is the experience of myself as Will, resisted by that which 
wills otherwise than I will. This experience, when reflected 
upon, inevitably leads to the conception of reality as dynamic, 
as being a cause; and it compels the mind to apply this con- 
ception to all forms of change in the real beings which are 
observed to be so related to each other that their changes in 
space and time are statable in terms of some mutually ap- 
plicable formula. " Force is action regarded as the cause of 
a change in relations. The action of any particular being, 
when regarded as the cause of subsequent changes of relations, 
either internal or external to that being, is its exercise of 
' force ' so-called." And since the appropriate use of the word 
" will " makes it equivalent to the entire active aspect of the 
Self, so that we are justified in saying, " as a doer I am a 
Will " ; if we wish to give a real meaning to the term " unity 
of force," we must substitute for it the living conception of 
a oneness of Will. 

Indeed, there is no real unity to forces that are located in 
an indefinite or infinite number of particular beings. Such 
unity is a mere abstraction, — an agreement to consider as really 



190 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

one a multitude of existences that are really many. Abstract 
force is no entity; wills are, on the contrary, the very essen- 
tials of reality. Force here and there, then and now, has no 
unitary Being; it cannot act as a cause to bring about a sys- 
tematic disposition and behavior of the many particular beings 
which exist in the world. The real Cause of the observed sys- 
tem of things must be found in One Will. 

But, furthermore, it is an orderly system of things for which 
some sort of account is needed. It is a world whose unity 
requires a relative, if not an absolute permanency of forms, 
a dependable sequence and connection of changes in space and 
time, and a law-abiding action of the many forces at work, 
for which a theory of reality is demanded. Man's knowledge 
of this world, as it is obtained through the achievements of the 
particular sciences, will not allow him to imagine forms and 
conjecture laws, and then force them in an arbitrary way, or 
in a purely logical way, upon the real, known system of 
things. For all these Things actually have forms; they really 
act in formative ways upon one another; they do actually obey 
laws. Now what does all this way of talking, together with 
the convictions and knowledges, which compel it and " back 
it up/' signify for a true theory of reality? Philosophy wants 
an answer to this question. The problem of metaphysics in 
all its breadth and depth is now before us, as it has been great- 
ened and emphasized by the positive sciences. Under the forces 
of gravity, adhesion and resistance, chemical attraction and 
repulsion, electricity, etc., the various kinds of massive bodies, 
molecules, and atoms, of the earth's substance have been formed ; 
and the human mind may discover the uniform qualitative 
and quantitative relations and determining conditions, under 
which these various formative processes have taken place. By 
the action of these same forces, and perhaps of other forces 
which might properly be called vital, in conformity to the 
laws of heredity, natural selection, and the undeterminate fac- 
tor of chance-variation, the different families, genera, and 



NATURE OF SO-CALLED " CATEGORIES " 191 

species, of the animal and plant world, are continually being 
formed. Each individual, of any species, has its own peculiar 
form: and thus it is known as an mdividual as well as a 
member of a species. Xo Thing can be real, without form. 
No formed thing, or thing in the process of formation, can 
escape the " reign of law.' ' The way it forms itself, and at 
the same time exercises a formative influence on other thnu ; . 
is determined by its so-called " nature.'* And here again the 
mind reaches the place where mystery of ultimate fact, and 
human ignorance of the cause of the unifying action of innum- 
erable causes, limit even the attempt to conjecture, or theorize, 
in terms of knowledge. Our mental picture of the forms and 
laws which we attribute io things, considered as a purely men- 
tal picture, is certainly worthy to be called an idea. But we do 
not believe that this mental picture is merely our idea; or that 
it gives notice simply of the activities of an ideating faculty in 
us. We believe that the forms do actually belong to the real 
things. We believe that the laws faithfully represent — al- 
though only in a partial and one-sided way — the actual behavior 
in a system of inter-related causes, of these same real things. 
If we may not say that we know this to be true; then we may 
not say that we know anything of, or about, the things of our 
daily experience; — much less of, or about, the kind of a system 
o: things in the midst of which, and according to the Nature 
of which, we may have any growth of knowledge at all. 

For the individual Thing, this universal fact of knowledge — 
namely, that it is known only in terms of an idea — undoubt- 
edly means to express the conviction that it is itself an ideated 
thing. And, indeed, it may be claimed with confidence that, 
unless things were in-themselves ^mindeoV 3 man could not 
mind things. True ideas of real things imply the immanence 
of ideas in things. In a more abstract and figurative way the 
same conviction may be expressed by Baying: " The ''immanent 
idea ' joins hands with e immanent' force, to explain to the 
mind the inmost nature of that real Being to which they both 



192 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

belong." And the word immanent seems appropriate, because, 
just as there is no actual force, that floats about in mid-air or 
moves as a kind of subtle entity off from one thing to get over 
on to another and -different thing; so there is no idea actually- 
attributable to any one thing that is not realized in the being 
and behavior of the thing. In order to serve as an explanatory 
principle the idea must correspond to the essential nature of 
the reality. And this is what science really means when it talks 
about the nature of things — individual, specific, generic, etc. 

Even to speak of a " system " inevitably implies the con- 
vergence, the harmony, brought about by some central control, 
of many ideas under some ideal plan. Any system — such is the 
nature of man's mind, and such the nature of a sys- 
tem — must appear to him as the actualization of some one's 
ideas. And the more complicated with regard to the number 
and constitution of its members and the number and intricacy 
of its laws, any system appears to be; the more exacting and 
imperative, as well as difficult, is the demand which such sys- 
tem makes for an interpretation in terms of ideas. This is 
true even of such a system as is the real world which every 
plain man knows some little about, and of which he makes 
use to some good purpose in his practical life day by day. The 
most ignorant fellow knows something about the actual forms 
of real things and about the laws, or uniform modes of action 
and reaction, under which they are causally related. But the 
modern sciences, taken in good faith as to their proclamations 
of knowledge, disclose a Universe whose vastness of extent, 
infinity of forms, rapidity and extent of change, subtlety and 
magnitude of forces, and multitude of laws, exceed the utmost 
stretches of the imagination of previous generations of men. 
This Ideal these sciences present, as not merely an idea of the 
" scientists " themselves, but as verifiable knowledge of the con- 
stitution and behavior of the real Being of the World. It 
is the Reality, which metaphysical philosophy, as well as sci- 
ence and common-sense, would understand by the term Be- 



NATURE OF SO-CALLED " CATEGORIES " 193 

ing of the World. It would seem, then, that the unity of 
force, or One Will, must also serve as the real locus for the 
ideas, or ideals, that are shaping and controlling that com- 
plex of particular beings which man knows as his world. Will 
and Idea must be joined in Reality. As Teichmuller, in his 
" Darwinism and Philosophy," says : " The interaction of all 
the elements presupposes laws which go beyond the existence 
of each separate element, and embrace all particular things in 
a unity. Whoever, therefore, assumes any laws of nature 
whatever, must also assume a system of laws, and must con- 
sequently refer to one ultimate unity or ultimate end." The 
same thing must also be said of those forms and laws under 
which specific kinds of things come into being, develope in 
manifold changing relations to one another, contribute their 
share to the existence and ongoing of the same system, and 
then pass out of existence leaving the unity of the system un- 
impaired and even enriched. 

And now, gathering together the conclusions which seem 
suggested, if not forced upon the mind by an attempt to in- 
terpret the significance of the categories, we affirm : " All 
Reality is — as known to man or conceivable by man — a sys- 
tem of beings and processes co-operating in the realization 
of ideal ends/' Man, indeed, knows only a small number of 
these beings, and knows only very imperfectly such as he 
knows, or knows about, in any degree. The ideas which things 
realize are always only partially, fitfully, and dimly repre- 
sented, by human ideas. The Ideal of the World which its 
Unity of Force is actualizing, under the conditions of space 
and time, is even more imperfectly, fitfully, and dimly pre- 
sented in terms of some human ideal. But thus to limit the 
knowledge of reality is not to discredit it completely; indeed, 
it is not at all to discredit it, as valid for the convictions of in- 
tellectual faith, for the growth of the sciences, and for the con- 
duct of the practical life. Science does not simply imagine 
that its interpretations of the categories may be true for real- 



194 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ity; it knows that they are true. All knowledge assumes, and 
all the growth of knowledge confirms, this conviction. And 
when it is declared that ideas are " immanent " in reality, the 
adjective is used with neither a spatial nor a purely figurative 
meaning; it is only asserted that ideas are a necessary factor 
in the explanation of reality. " For Eeality, in general, is 
known as actually being a Unity of Force guided by ideas of 
form and law into processes that conform to ideal ends." 



CHAPTER X 

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 

The general theory concerning the nature of that system 
of real beings which is known as The World, as this theory 
was proposed at the close of the last chapter, obviously stands 
in need of further elaboration, criticism, and defense. This 
need is chiefly due to the following three causes: First, the 
distinction which it is necessary to make between mere things 
and true selves; second, the apparent difference between the 
meanings of the various theories which the particular sciences 
propose, and a metaphysical theory with its attempt to elicit the 
true significance of them all; and third, the vague but influ- 
ential and wide-spreading objection to any view of the nature 
of Eeality which is liable to be taunted with the charge of an- 
thropomorphism, and so deemed puerile and worthy of prompt 
rejection. 

This last objection to the metaphysics of idealism may be 
most promptly and effectually disposed of. For one may ask, 
with an intention somewhat more than facetious: What kind 
of a theory that is other than anthropomorphic do you ex- 
pect from a mind which belongs to the species called an- 
thropos? Indeed, what sort of knowledge can a human being 
claim, that is not human knowledge? The swiftest grey- 
hound cannot outrun his own shadow. The worst fool does 
not try to ascend higher on any tree by cutting off from that 
same tree the limb to which he is clinging. The navigator 
does not more surely reach his desired haven by throwing over- 
board charts, barometer, and compass, instead of consulting 
the first, observing the second, and making the needed correc- 
tions in the pointings of the third. But when the intrinsic 
absurdity of discrediting any theory on the ground of its 

195 



196 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

anthropomorphism merely, is pointed out, it is customary 
to turn the direction of the objection, by aiming it against 
metaphysics in general. And this, in these days, is chiefly 
done by those who would place science and metaphysics in 
positions of sharp contrast, not to say open opposition. This 
turn in the objection may be just as promptly and success- 
fully met and answered. It is the true and verifiable appreci- 
ation of what the Being of the World is, and the more com- 
prehensive and practically available knowledge of the nature, 
relations, changes, and developments and uses of the particular 
beings existent in the world, which both science and metaphysi- 
cal philosophy are seeking. But science is as apt to go wrong 
and subsequently to find itself confuted, in respect to its state- 
ment of facts, its definitions of natures and laws, and its more 
general hypotheses and theories, as is philosophy. Moreover, 
just as a philosophy not well grounded in the particular sci- 
ences is airy and baseless, so a science without a metaphysics 
of its own is baseless and unsatisfying. Metaphysics is, if 
wise, then more or less scientific; science is, of necessity, more 
or less wisely metaphysical. Both are seeking truth; both are 
of course anthropomorphic, since they are both products of the 
mind of man. 

We acknowledge, however, the right of all the particular 
sciences to demand of any theory of Eeality, that it shall con- 
form itself to the truth of those, their particular and partial 
theories of the different kinds and transactions of real things, 
which fall within their respective provinces. In saying this 
it is meant to place special emphasis upon the word, Truth. 
Nor is the word used with a sinister meaning, or in a cap- 
tious spirit. For metaphysics, as a Theory of Reality, aims to 
accept all the established facts, laws, and theories, of the par- 
ticular sciences, and by detecting and elucidating the uni- 
versal which they enfold to arrive at a more nearly ultimate 
view of the Being of the World. 1 

*With regard to the present need of a philosophy of nature, I 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 197 

In treating the categories hitherto, they have been for the 
most part considered as they apply to so-called Things. And, 
indeed, the very word Thing seems consecrated to this most 
general use. The Ego as a Self, or — to use for a moment the 
terms of religious homily — as an embodied spirit, is some 
sort of a thing. All other selves are known to it, both that 
they really are and what they really are, only through the ap- 
pearance and behavior of things. Even the knowledge by self- 
consciousness of its most purely spiritual existence and activ^ 
ities seems always, when analyzed, to bear traces of affects 
that must be ascribed to the thing-like body it calls its own; 
self-knowledge rest's upon an obvious basis in the sensuous im- 
pressions, and mental images of such impressions, which are 
unmistakably of a thing-like character. 

On the other hand, this " diremptive process," with its con- 
tinuous development in both of its two aspects, which makes 



quote in full a note from the author's Philosophy of Knowledge 
(Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1897), p. 372. "There are few more allur- 
ing and promising fields for a critical use of the reflective powers 
in which philosophy arises than those afforded just now by the 
physical and natural sciences. I have several times already ex- 
pressed my conviction that these sciences are more than ever 
full to the brim, and ready to burst, with ontological conceptions 
and assumptions of most portentous dimensions and uncertain 
validity. Surely scepticism and agnosticism, now nearly sated 
with feeding upon the ancient body of alleged truths in ethics and 
religion, will soon turn their devouring maw upon the structure 
generated and nourished by the modern scientific spirit as domi- 
nant in chemico-physical and biological researches. And if the 
strength of their appetite and the vigor of their digestion re- 
main unimpaired, must we not fear that even the bones of this 
structure will disappear from view? 

" Consider, for example, what would be left of the hypothesis 
of biological evolution, if a thorough critical and sceptical treat- 
ment were given to its metaphysical basis. Surely the way in 
which many students of these sciences vacillate between the most 
comprehensive professions of knowledge as to what the world is, 
and how it came to be, and the most abject confessions of igno- 
rance, is little better than scandalous." 



198 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

one know one's Self as different from, in some sort the oppo- 
site of, and often the antagonist of, all other things, whether 
thing-like selves or mere things to which are not accorded the 
privilege of being selves, is the most complete of separations, 
whether actual or imaginable. In terms of it the Self conceives 
of all particular beings. Nor is this a matter of choice or of 
convenience. It is, as has already been seen, enforced upon all 
the cognitive acts by the very terms under which they take 
place; that is, by the fact that the categories apply to them 
all. All the particularity that things have, all their separate 
being as possessed of qualities, as measurable and numerable, 
as moving or standing in relations, and when acting as causes 
upon each other, or belonging to different species and genera, 
involves and depends upon this distinction between the Self 
and all other realities. 

It would seem fitting, therefore, that any further elabora- 
tion of a theory of reality should acknowledge the most im- 
portant of all distinctions of a cognitive, and so, of a meta- 
physical sort. This is the distinction between Things and 
Selves — a distinction which has its origin in that develop- 
mental process by which every human being comes, more or 
less clearly, to know himself as in some sort apart from all 
other real beings, both selves and things. Stated in more 
general terms, this need forces a further division of meta- 
physics into a philosophy of nature and a philosophy of mind. 
For the same process of development which compels the 
recognition of an essential separation of each Self, carries 
every self-conscious mind still further. Parts of the body are 
obviously less interior and more separable than are other parts, 
from the essential conception of a Self. They, at least, are 
mine, and yet not-me. And the more the path of such reflec- 
tions is followed, and the refinements of self-consciousness are 
secured and trusted, the more interior and more sharp does 
the separation become between what is of the very essence of 
the Self, and what can be more or less readily known, or at 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 199 

least conceived of, as dispensable without impairment or de- 
struction of the real Self. Thus all of the complex being of 
the individual man with which the physical and. natural sci- 
ences have to do may come to be regarded as falling under the 
domain of mere things. Then, on the contrary, the pure phi- 
losophy of the Self becomes the philosophy purely, of the soul 
or the mind. Now whatever may be objected to the validity or 
the value of such an extreme of separation between the ele- 
ments which undoubtedly commingle in all the experiences of 
every human being, there can be little doubt about the impro- 
priety of making the theory of the human body a distinct 
branch of science, apart from the chemieo-physical and bio- 
logical sciences. The metaphysical conclusions warranted by 
this particular collection of atoms into an organic mass, are 
no whit different from those warranted by any other living 
body. My body is a part of nature; it is only temporarily 
loaned to me, as a spirit, even if I may maintain for myself a 
continued spiritual existence after the loan is withdrawn, or 
even in independence of the loan while I am still in the enjoy- 
ment of it. 

It remains now only to explain that in this chapter the 
word Nature is used in a restricted signification. In the larger 
meaning of the word, Nature is the equivalent of the Being 
of the World, men and animals as having minds, as well as all 
things that are supposed to be without any minds of their own. 
We are going for the time being, however, to speak of the phi- 
losophy of nature as the metaphysics of things, — but more 
particularly, under the terms by which things are known to 
the physical and natural sciences. 

It will readily be seen that the theory of reality justifies a 
certain kind of the personification of things. So far as things 
are known at all by selves, they must be known as sharing in 
those characteristics which selves know themselves actually 
to possess. So much of anthropomorphism is involved, of neces- 
sity, in the nature of things as known according to the nature 



200 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

of the knower. It is not necessary to be always reminding 
ourselves that human knowledge is human; and, therefore, 
that it is finite in the sense of its being both imperfect and 
limited by the nature of human cognitive powers. Now, in- 
dividual things are known to be self-like, in that they are 
causes of change, in themselves and in other things, under re- 
lations of space, time, etc., and in accordance with their proper 
forms and laws. Interpreted in terms of experience this means 
that their essence is to be wills expressive of ideas. But these 
individual things are only individual in that they are ele- 
ments, or parts, of a vast system, which is known as some sort 
of a unity; and known only in so far as it is unified by the 
progress of experience, resulting in the growth of knowledge. 
Thus, the Being of the World is apprehended, and by the ad- 
vance of the sciences, is more and more truly comprehended, 
in virtual terms of a Personal Life. Is such humanizing, or 
anthropomorphizing, of the world rational? 

It is a well-known fact of human history that the personi- 
fication of natural things and forces has gone on, in all the 
past and to an almost unlimited extent, in a quite uncritical 
way. Indeed, this tendency to interpret the existence and the 
behavior of things in terms of man's experience with himself 
has been the intellectual spring from which the various 
streams of religious belief have taken their rise. Invisible 
spirits, constructed by human imagination, have been assumed 
in order to account for the self-like appearance and behavior 
of sensible things. In so-called primitive and in savage 
peoples this tendency is peculiarly lively and effective, because 
it furnishes a ready-made, satisfactory explanation of experi- 
ences which otherwise could not be explained at all. The 
character and results, for the development both of science and 
of religion, which such anthropomorphic tendencies have had 
in the past, will be further remarked upon when we come to 
examine the origin of religion in man's experience with him- 
self and with the world of things. In this connection it is 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 201 

sufficient to point out that, while these childlike imaginings 
of primitive and savage men, have resulted in much supersti- 
tion and error, and have served to create a complete jumble of 
ideas as to distinctions between the natural and the so-called 
supernatural, they have never by any means completely ob- 
scured what modern men call the natural or mechanical 
and more purely scientific or practical view of the nature, 
uses, and laws, of material things. Long after man had dis- 
covered fire, he cut down a tree and warmed himself by using 
part of it as fuel, while out of another intrinsically similar 
part he made himself a god; he worshipped the same divinity 
which he used to roast his food withal. He poisoned his spear 
or arrow in order to kill his foe, just as he propitiated the ser- 
pent in order not to be killed himself; there was something 
divine in the poison although it was available for practical 
uses. And when he worshipped the all-glorious Sun as the 
greatest of heavenly divinities, he none the less knew that 
it was some sort of a material body moving in space and 
furnishing him with cherishing or withering heat and 
light. 

It is customary to look on the attitude of the modern, in- 
structed mind, which is assumed toward the problem of the 
Being of the World, as very different, both in science and in 
religion, from that of the primitive or savage man. And in 
truth it is vastly changed and much for the better. The phi- 
losophy of religion now regards this Being as a Eational Will, 
or Active Eeason, who is also entitled to be worshipped and 
obeyed as perfect Ethical Spirit. In the conception of its 
Unity, it agrees with the conclusions of the physical and 
natural sciences, by which religion has been greatly aided in 
arriving at and defending this conception. By the same sci- 
ences it has been forced, as well as helped, through the con- 
test which has gone on between the rival (sic) claims of the 
natural and supernatural, to regard the Divine Being, whom 
faith worships as God, as manifested by his immanence in the 



202 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

World. Whether lie may also be known, or believed in, as 
perfect Ethical Spirit, is a question which it lies outside of 
the province of general metaphysics to determine, or even to 
discuss. On the other hand, the natural and physical sciences 
have more and more demonstrated, what they have with ever-in- 
creasing confidence assumed, — namely, a unity in reality, a 
systematic ordering in terms of forms, forces, laws, and the 
principle of evolution, for the observed varieties and complexi- 
ties of the particular things. Undoubtedly, these sciences have 
continually outstripped their definite proofs, on a basis of 
observed facts. To state the case somewhat figuratively: 
Science knows the Being of the World as perpetually unify- 
ing itself by processes which overcome, and abolish or harmon- 
ize the seeming contradictions. Therefore, science is more 
and more ceasing to be disturbed, or hustled out of its con- 
victions, that further research and increased growth of knowl- 
edge will continue to perfect, — no matter how much it modi- 
fies in details, — this rational faith in the unity of the world. 
Now in all this, as a true and consistent theory of metaphysics 
shows, science and religion are at one, so far as their re- 
spective faiths and knowledge go. 

The modern physical and natural sciences have developed 
a vastly complex, intricate, and often essentially mysterious 
mechanism, by which they interpret the Being and the be- 
havior of this one world. Forces, undreamed of and unimag- 
inable in the light of previously known facts, are now being 
discovered and made to manifest themselves to the senses, in 
however partial and limited ways. Formerly unattainable 
regions of space are now revealed through the telescope, spec-- 
troscope, and improved photography. Elements, so minute- 
that the atoms of chemistry seem gigantic in comparison, are< 
found to be in ceaseless motion with a swiftness that puts to* 
shame the most of the planets. The mysterious changes of! 
the ovum, when impregnated by the protozoon, are displayed 
on microscope slides, although the causes of these changes are 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 203 

scarcely less mysterious than of yore. But the general tend- 
ency of the aims and the claims of the modern science of 
things is unmistakable. It would substitute a mechanical 
explanation, a description of the actual changes which go on 
in the mechanism, for any attempt at a metaphysical theory. 
A metaphysical theory, on the contrary, desires to know the 
real nature of the Being of the World in terms of universal 
human experience; and these terms are always and inevitably 
terms that represent wills, active in the realization of ideas. 
In a word, metaphysics interprets mechanism in terms of 
personal experience. 

The perfect propriety and boundless benefits of the scien- 
tific point of view and the scientific method, are not now in 
dispute. And if they were, no one should be swifter and 
more valiant in their defence than the inquirer after a ten- 
able system of metaphysics, as a theory of reality. Only it 
must be definitely understood in what essential respects, if 
any, this theory is modified by the valid claims of the physi- 
cal and natural sciences, in so far as these are applicable to 
philosophy. Many metaphysical fancies and superstitions as 
to the precise self-like nature of things, and of their behavior, 
have indeed been either totally disproved, or much modified 
by modern science. The phenomena are now to be arranged 
and conceived of in causal relations and as subjects for 
measurement and calculation; they are no longer imagined, 
or believed in, as under the control of separable and invisible 
spiritual agencies. It is just as true as it formerly was, how- 
ever, and as it always will be, that all things are known only as 
they are the objects, or the implicates, of human experience; 
and that this experience, being the experience of a Self, is stat- 
able, whether its objects be Things or Selves, only in terms of 
that which is self -like. So far, then, as the nature of that 
which, so to say, accounts for the mechanism and which works 
the mechanism is concerned, modern science is as essentially an- 
thropomorphic, and its findings are as truly a species of personi- 



204 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

fication, as were the fancies and superstitions of the primi- 
tive man. 

Let us now return to one of our earlier points of standing. 
Children and child-like men, individuals and races, make great 
use of conscious, spiritual operations in their attempts to un- 
derstand their own environment and to adjust themselves to 
its changes. With them, ideas are forces; or rather, with 
them, the will to realize certain conscious purposes accounts 
for the observed facts of the changing relations of things and 
of selves. This insight into the nature of other realities they 
cannot attain, until they have had experience of themselves 
as ideating forces, or as wills realizing their own purposes in 
others than themselves. The things about whose self-like con- 
stitution such minds feel most confidence, and which they 
know in most perfect and trustworthy manner as capable of 
being appealed to by motives that are comprehensible, are, of 
course, in childhood, their playmates; and in adult life, their 
fellow men. But to the human child, the dog, the horse, the 
pet lamb, is scarcely less completely self-like, because of its giv- 
ing abundant signs of a self-like existence substantially like its 
own. As knowledge grows, whether such knowledge as is called 
ordinary and merely practical, or such as is scientific and 
precise, doubt arises in the case of many individuals and spe- 
cies of things. The man no longer sits astride a hobby-horse 
and imagines it to be controlled in its behavior by a purposeful 
will of it's own; but he cannot easily deny a large measure of 
such control to the favorite animal which he rides to hunt or 
fondles affectionately in the stable. And if he begins to reflect 
on the general problem, he is at a loss to know just where to 
set limits to his anthropomorphizing. How much of this 
being of an ideating will shall be attributed to the still lower, 
and the lowest, of the animals; how much, in moods of poetic 
sympathy with nature, to the woods, the fields, and the flowers 
that bloom in his garden? 

Now science, instead of solving this difficulty, only increases 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 205 

and complicates it. For the mechanism which science discovers 
in all the animal- and plant-world, and even in the very con- 
stitution and behavior of the atoms, is so much more wonder- 
ful and seemingly purposeful — however doubtful we may be 
about the number and ordering of the so-called purposes, or 
the precise locus to which we are to ascribe them, — that the 
simple child-like way of attributing souls to certain choice 
things only, appears to be an act of undiscriminating favorit- 
ism. On the other hand, science knows scarcely any better 
just where to stop, or precisely how to limit its theory of real- 
ity as a sytem of self-like beings than does the child, or the 
unscientific man. The student of nature sees, what the or- 
dinary observer cannot see; he sees amcebas, and bacteria, and 
white-blood corpuscles, and ova, and cilia, and single cells 
or groups of cells, in all forms of living tissue, behaving in a 
more or less self-like way. Nor can he arrest his suspicions 
of something immanent in the reality which, in some faint 
measure at least, corresponds to his own conscious life, when 
he minutely observes the behavior of the different beings be- 
longing to the world of plants. For, in the first place, at the 
lower limits of the two so-called kingdoms, it is difficult, or 
impossible for him to tell, to which of the two certain species 
should be assigned. And, second, many of those species, about 
the plant-like nature of which there is no doubt, show clearer 
evidences of a soulful existence than do many forms, and 
these by no means the lowest, of animal life. 

Whatever determination may be shown on the part of bio- 
logical science to assume the entire burden of difficulty in 
dealing with so obscure a problem, physics and chemistry can- 
not wholly escape their share. For the masses, atoms, and 
ions, which these sciences either observe or imagine, are also 
self-like existences. One of the most distinguished of Ameri- 
can astronomers said in print some years ago, that all the 
planets in the solar system always behaved <e as though they 
knew " — each one — " how they ought to behave under all the 



206 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

circumstances, and taking into the account their actual rela- 
tions to all the others." 

It appears, then, that all things are known to men as more 
or less self-like, in so far as they are known to men at all. 
But are we for this reason obliged to say that every single 
thing, inorganic as well as organic, massive as well as indi- 
vidual, really is a consciously ideating will? By no means 
necessarily so. Much less are we obliged to consider every 
Thing as a self-conscious, self-determining being — a sort of 
completed or fully developed Self. And here it is proper to 
interpose suggestions which will be reconsidered as established 
truths in the following chapter. No human Self is really 
such a being, except through a process of becoming, or self- 
evolution. To be really a Self, the individual must, partly, 
by action of its own, and by developing that mysterious gift 
which ignorance calls a nature, achieve self-hood. Further is 
it an undoubted psychological fact that all human beings are 
not, and never become, to the same degree, really true and de- 
veloped selves. At the beginning of their existence, human 
offspring are, as yet, in no definable meaning of the words, 
real selves. But human offspring may, and under all normal 
conditions they do, actually develope more or less of self-hood. 
If one chooses to tolerate the terms of the scholastic meta- 
physics, one may say that all human beings are at birth only 
"potentially," and not actually, true selves. This pronounce- 
ment of epistemology and metaphysics — that all things are 
known to man only as they are more or less self-like — ought 
to be exceedingly satisfactory to modern biologists. It comes 
in very handy when describing the anthropoid (or man-like) 
apes, or whatever other animal may be conjectured to have 
been the nearest of kin (or most self-like) in man's ancestral 
lines. 

Such a theory of reality, when applied to so-called material 
things, is customarily met by the physical and natural sciences 
with several objections. Part of these objections are well 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 207 

taken; and some of them cannot be answered. But then there 
are objections to every conceivable theory of the Being of the 
World, at large; and evidently the large general ground for 
objections lies in the fact that man, with all the advances of 
modern science and gathering together, as best man may, the 
united experiences of the race, knows so very little and so 
dubiously about the world in which he lives. When, then, 
the positive sciences object to such a metaphysics on grounds 
of agnosticism one should be ready at once to assent; no one 
does know precisely how self-like is the real being of any in- 
dividual thing. The human knower must know all he knows 
at all, in terms of his self-conscious experience. Does this 
experience permit him truly to know those other realities 
which he knows as his " fellow men " ? We cannot doubt this ; 
for here doubt would not only stultify reason but would un- 
dermine and destroy all the foundations of ethical, social, and 
civic life. How far does the same form of mental representa- 
tion touching the nature of real things, apply to the horse 
and the dog, to the bird and the bee, to the amoeba and the 
bacterium, to the lily or the palm, to the planet, the atom, or 
the ion ? Ah ! who shall tell us, whether " plain man " or 
expert biologist; or perhaps, poet, as well as either of the other 
two? At any rate, whatever any one tells of truth will be 
couched in essentially the same terms of self-like existence. 

The more serious of the objections to such a metaphysics of 
things as recognizes in all of them certain signs of a being re- 
vealed to man's cognitive activities, in terms of ideating wills, 
are chiefly the following three: First, the objection to any 
metaphysics as being quite beyond the range of human ex- 
perience; second, the objection that the descriptive history of 
the mechanism of things is a sufficient exposition and ex- 
planation of the reality; and, third, a certain covert form 
of objection, which consists in using mere conceptions, and 
even mere words, as though they were real causes, and so 
sufficient principles of explanation. The answer to these three 



208 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

classes of objections, however, does not need to be conducted 
in three parts. It will be enough to show that the metaphysics 
of the natural and physical sciences themselves is obliged to 
express itself in terms which either have no real meaning at 
all, beyond that of being convenient abstractions, or else which, 
virtually admit, if they do not positively argue for, essentially 
the same theory of reality as that which we are advocating. 
And this must, of course, be done in an irenic and not polem- 
ical way. For such a method of discussing common interests 
is imperatively demanded by those relations of friendship and 
mutual assistance which have been shown to exist between 
science and philosophy. In this spirit the philosopher may 
say to the man of science : " Come and let us reason together ; 
possibly we may help each other to understand more clearly 
what is the more ultimate significance of that interpretation 
of the Nature of Things which we both find ourselves com- 
pelled to give." 

Let it be repeated, then, that no fault is to be found with 
the physical and natural sciences because they make the as- 
sumptions and use the language of common-sense, or of a " non- 
self-critical " experience, in describing the world of things. 
This is their privilege. And unless science aims to be also 
consciously and learnedly metaphysical, this modest reserve 
is its duty. Indeed, in this way, just as the dramatist, the 
novelist, the painter, the sculptor, or any form of artist, con- 
tributes most, when he practices his art without attempt to 
be conscious of its full value for a valid theory of art; so it is 
with the expert student of any species of real things in respect 
to his contributions to general metaphysics as a theory of 
reality. 

There are two classes of conceptions which modern science 
constantly uses in solving its problems and in presenting the 
terms of the solution when reached. One of these is set forth 
in some such term as " nature," whether applied to individual 
things, to species of things, or to the total collection of species 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 209 

considered as a series of dependency related species, in time, 
and under the principle of evolution. The other conception is 
that of " mechanism/' the elements and relations of which may 
he measured, numbered, and so combined under quantitative 
formulas, into some kind of a system. Let us now inquire 
into the meaning for metaphysics, as a theory of reality, of 
both these classes of conceptions. 

What does science really intend to sa}', when it speaks of 
the nature of any Thing; or when it applies the term Nature 
(often written with a capital) to the total of known or 
imagined natural things? It means to designate that con- 
cealed part of the explanation of observed changes which can- 
not be ascribed to external beings, or to relations among ex- 
ternal beings. In a word, the nature of any Thing, or System 
of Things is internal. Speaking figuratively, it belongs to 
the very self -hood of the thing; or, if one may make use of a 
much misused phrase, it is the " thing-in-itself ." Yet, in 
order even to seem to complete its full complement of causes, 
science is absolutely compelled to make use of this conception, 
which, from the point of view of science only, always remains 
blind, tautological, empty for theory, and practically absurd. 
Let this sweeping charge be examined in any case where the 
conception is used to explain the behavior of particular things. 
Let it be supposed, for example, that both physics and chem- 
istry are asked to tell what is all they know about the thing 
which appears to the senses, as water. Chemistry will demon- 
strate that its constitution is H 2 0, — that is, approximately, 
2000 atoms of hydrogen gas combined with 1000 atoms of 
oxygen under certain conditions (or relations affecting both) 
of temperature, pressure, etc. Physics will recite in detail the 
immensely valuable and extensively applicable qualities of the 
compound, under variations of many specific kinds and ex- 
tending to an indefinite number of individual things and 
species of things. But suppose that both these sciences are 
pressed for more ultimate answers. " What, now," the chemist 



210 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

is asked, "really is this so-called hydrogen gas; and what 
really is its twin sister in the transaction, the so-called oxygen 
gas ? " " Why do these two unite in just such, and no other, 
proportions to form the compound water ? " And, " why has 
this compound such astonishingly different properties from 
those of which there is the slightest trace in either of the two 
elements which compose it ? " The man of science, in his 
effort to describe the nature of these two gases, may enumerate 
some of the many different proportions in which each one of 
them unites with many different kinds of atoms, under many 
different terms of temperature, pressure, etc. Or, especially 
if he is enthusiastically committed to the newest physics, he 
may refer to it for a fuller explanation of the nature of the 
atoms. Then we shall hear yet more wonderful stories of 
recent discoveries as to what ions and electrons can do within 
the atom; of radio-active properties rather than atomic forces; 
and of, as yet, wholly unproved conjectures as to the number 
and geometrical arrangement within the atoms, of the yet 
more ultimate elements of the atomic elements themselves. 
But after all is said, the mind returns to the original inquiry, 
and presses it with even greater insistence and force : Why do 
all these beings, which are either observed or assumed really 
to exist, behave, under so many varied and changeable rela- 
tions, as they actually do behave? To this question there is 
only one answer possible at the last; and this answer is a 
confession of the limit of knowledge, a confession as to igno- 
rance of so much of the real causes as, after all, resides in 
the things themselves. We may imagine, then, this conversa- 
tion to take place. Question: "Why do the things — masses 
or elements of masses — behave, in changing relations of time 
and space toward each other, as they in fact do behave?" 
Answer : " Because it is their nature to." Question : " What 
do you mean by this nature which causes them so to behave ? " 
Answer : " The sum-total of what they actually do, so far as I 
cannot account for it by reciting their relations to other 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 211 

things." But shall we not call this a kind of perpetual 
" whipping of the devil around the stump " of invincible 
ignorance? And is it not an ignorance which we cannot over- 
come, or lessen, by driving him the faster as Nature herself 
increases the size of the stump? 

If, now, the physicist is asked to explain completely the con- 
stitution and behavior of the compound water (shall we say, 
"in-itself" considered?), he would not have the slightest ad- 
vantage over the chemist, when questioned in similar manner. 
It is impossible to explain the entire nature, or complex of 
properties, of any material substance by analyzing it into the 
elements of which it is composed; or to account for all that 
it can do by enumerating and measuring its changes under an 
endless variety of different outside forces and changing rela- 
tions. It, too, has a being-in-itself; it has a nature of its own; 
and yet science can only describe that nature by telling the story 
of what it does, of how it behaves, under the action of outside 
forces and amidst changing external relations. 

What is true of any element, or any compound, of material 
reality, is true of every element and of every compound. But 
the illustrations of the general truth are particularly pertinent 
and instructive when we consider the explanations which bio- 
logical science gives of organic beings and their evolution. 
Here reference may be made to the very terms, species, genera, 
etc., as well as to all the phrases thought to be explanatory of 
the reasons for the connections of species, for the changes of 
species, and for the general history of specific forms (such as 
heredity, variation, evolution, etc.). Part of these explana- 
tions — the larger part, if theory seems best to walk on all fours 
in that way — must undoubtedly be attributed to more or less 
appreciable and measurable relations to an environment of in- 
organic beings, and of various other organic beings, other 
species, in, the "struggle for existence" so-called. But the 
complete explanation cannot be found in this way. The indi- 
viduals of each species have a being-in-themselves ; and what is 



212 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

discovered as common to them all, in respect of constitution, 
behavior, method of development, etc., science is obliged to 
lump together in the same blind way and call it the "nature 
of the species." When this nature is seen manifesting itself in 
ways that indicate a most marvellous intelligence somewhere, 
but an intelligence which cannot be localized in the individual's 
" stream of consciousness " ; then science begins to talk about 
instinct, or to use in explanation the yet blinder and more mis- 
leading conception of "unconscious intellect." 

All the recent history of the biological sciences shows, by 
perpetually recurrent and unmistakable signs, the same neces- 
sity. Outside of the Thing-itself you cannot wholly explain 
the existence, or the behavior, or the development, of any real 
Thing. The Thing-itself must count in the explanation. No 
wonder, then, that the science of biology has reacted against 
the extremes of a school which regarded the influences of en- 
vironment as constituting a sufficient hypothesis for the evo- 
lution of species. This hypothesis concealed its own insuffi- 
ciency under terms for the meaning of which there was little or 
nothing but a confession of complete ignorance. Thus it forced 
iipon itself the necessity of looking within the living creature, 
instead of without upon the environment, for additional means 
of explanation. But here is a field of research which is, al- 
though less extended in space, even more complex in character 
and difficult to subject to direct observation. Here are count- 
less millions of living cells, each one of which sustains mani- 
fold relations of action and reaction, of changing conditions, 
to other cells; but' each one of which has a specific nature of 
its own. And if science tries to explain all these, as develop- 
ing under externally determining causes, from the germinal 
cell of the impregnated ovum, it has not solved the problem 
in any different way. Indeed, it's solution seems to contradict 
from the first the most plainly observed facts. For each of 
the cells appears to have a nature of its own. Its very life 
consists in its being, in large measure, self-determining. But 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 213 

if, on the contrary, science manages to regard them all as sim- 
ply the products of the parent cell, determined by environment 
within the body to such a form of development, then, surely, 
it has packed away into this parent cell the marvel of an in- 
finitely complicated being-in-itself. Indeed, in this way, the 
ovum becomes, of all things directly observable in the world 
of things, possessed of a nature most rich and wonderful. It 
can, not only make itself so behave; but it can also make other 
beings which behave like itself. 

What need to pursue this enigma further, so far as the term 
" nature," or any similar term, is applied to individual things ? 
The meaning of that, whose meaning is to science wholly un- 
clear, because properly left uncriticized, is clear — if not by 
any means absolutely so, at least relatively — when translated 
into terms of metaphysics. Every real Thing is known as self- 
determining according to certain ideas. This assumption of 
a self-determination in accordance with specific ideas is the na- 
ture of the Thing. Xo explanation is complete without this 
assumption. To deny the assumption is to stultify all claim 
to explain by leaving out one-half of that appeal to reality which 
is necessary for any explanation. 

To show the limits and the insufficiency of all mechanical 
theories of nature, in the small or in the large, is now a com- 
paratively easy task. For the discussion of the term nature, 
as applied in the more restricted meaning, has prepared the 
way to an understanding of the real significance of the terms 
used to set forth the conception of mechanism. Mechanical 
theories may, however, be divided into two quite distinctly 
different classes. Of these, one may be called the merely me- 
chanical, or the theories which aim to describe appearances 
without explicit interpretation of the categories; and the other, 
those mechanical theories which are consciously and inten- 
tionally metaphysical, that is, which are theories of reality. 
The former class, so far as they remain faithful to their true 
character, have only a historical or descriptive value. They 



214 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

narrate the changes which are observed in space and time; 
but' they make no other attempt to explain these changes than 
that which is involved in their observed sequences in space and 
time. For example, in the cases assumed above, the chemist 
measures the quantity of the gases, the degrees of temperature, 
changes in space, the sequences in time; he records them 
all with faithful accuracy; and he then makes up as complete 
a descriptive history of the entire transaction as he possibly 
can. The physicist treats the observed masses, or the ions and 
electrons, the numbers and motions in space and sequences in 
time, in similar fashion. He permits himself to fancy the 
beautiful geometrical forms in which these invisible elements 
may be imagined to arrange themselves, although their minute- 
ness and the speed of their movements must be admitted to 
transcend all the limits of human vision. But neither chemist 
nor physicist can properly talk of forces of gravity, or even 
of strains, pressures, etc., and much .less of forces of attrac- 
tion or repulsion, as implying affinities between the atoms, 
or of radio-active forces as driving the ions, etc., without pass- 
ing quite beyond the sphere of a merely phenomenal mechanism 
into the mysterious realm of invisible, ontological entities and 
causes. So also with the authority in biology, as respects his 
method of dealing with the wonders of the impregnated ovum. 
He may observe under the microscope the changes which actu- 
ally take place in this ovum, and in its successors in space and 
time; he may give the history of them all, either in technical 
language or on an endless series of microscopic slides. But 
he has no right to speak of heredity, or variation, or natural 
selection, as though these terms covered mysterious forces 
which were the true but invisible causes of the phenomena. 
For this is to do something more than, and different from, 
the work of merely describing the mechanism; it is to import 
into the mechanism something which the senses cannot discover 
or verif}r, something from the categories, something that is 
metaphysical in its very nature. 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 215 

And, indeed, — to speak plainly, — there is not, and there 
cannot be any merely mechanical theory of any natural thing, 
or event in nature. One of the most universal, a priori unwar- 
rantable, and yet marvellous and marvellously effective meta- 
physical assumptions, is involved in every mechanical the- 
ory, even when reduced to its lowest terms by the attempt 
to exclude the least semblance of an ontological character. 
This particular assumption is the measurableness of all mate- 
rial things. The plain man takes the application of his 
ideas of the relations of magnitude and number, to the explor- 
ation and the practical uses of Things, as a matter of course. 
The man of science boasts of mathematics — geometry, cal- 
culus, etc. — as the indispensable right arm of his investigations 
and discoveries; and he feels that the latter are placed upon 
sure ground only after they have been reduced to the terms of 
mathematics. Biology envies physics and chemistry for its 
superior privileges in this line; and all the psychological sci- 
ences strive, although forever in vain, to place themselves by 
the aid of mathematics in the ranks of the so-called "exact 
sciences." More and more, also, does the development of the 
sciences in their application of the principles of mathematics 
to the mastery of Nature in the large and heroic way, evince 
and illustrate the supreme ontological truth: The concrete 
realities which constitute the comprehensive Whole, do actually 
obey, in their constitution and in their behavior, the rational 
principles, or categories of number and quantity. As affect- 
ing this fact, it makes no difference whether one takes the ex- 
treme and mistaken theory of Kant as to the purely a priori 
origin of these principles, or adopts the views of the most ex- 
treme empiricism. The fact is the important thing. The 
World, as known to the particular sciences, is more or less per- 
fectly constructed according to certain ideal principles of num- 
ber and of geometrical relations in space, and of measurable 
and numerical relations in time. " Pure mathematics " is 
derived from man's experiences with the mathematical nature 



216 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

of the real World; and it is rendered pure by a process of ab- 
straction which disregards all the other categories that furnish 
conditions for the various existences and relations of this real 
World. 

And now when we pass to the conception of Nature, as this 
conception is applied to all the real things in their known or 
imagined relations, we feel at liberty to take full account of 
all the categories in order to get at the metaphysical signifi- 
cance of this term. Indeed, we are compelled to do this. A 
merely descriptive history of the mechanism of Nature, or a 
theory of the Being of the World that is merely mechanical, 
will not account for the totality for which man has experience. 
Such a history, when converted into a theory, really explains 
nothing whatever. For if by a "merely mechanical theory" 
be meant a theory which is wholly devoid of metaphysical as- 
sumptions, no such theory can either be framed or stated. 
This Nature, which includes within Itself, all the particular 
things, with their varied natures and manifold, changing re- 
lations, must itself be possessed of all the categories. Only 
in this way can it be known ; only so far as it is known in this 
way, can it be explained. And since we are now using this 
term to cover the entire system of things, with their observed 
or inferred unity, it follows that Nature must be conceived of 
as having intelligibility; that is to say, it must be self-explan- 
atory. The Being of the World must include within itself all 
that is necessary to account for human tcnowedge, that the 
World is, and what It really is. 

Limits of space forbid the illustration of the principle just 
laid down for all the forms of knowledge in detail; we must be 
satisfied to discuss briefly two or three of the more important 
ones. This will suffice for our purpose the better, because con- 
siderations closely akin to those which are now about to be 
offered, have already been indicated more than once. 

In the first place, Nature must be endowed with categories 
of Quality; and these must be of such sort as to account for 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 217 

the innumerable special qualities of the infinite number of 
things which are included in Nature. It has just been seen 
that 1 the thinnest, most meagre, mechanical theory employs 
with confidence in its mastery of natural objects, and in its 
whole theory of the Universe, the ideas and ideals of mathe- 
matics. But quantity and number can never give to the mind 
any satisfactory explanation of the qualities of things. One 
might know thoroughly, and reflect through all eternity upon, 
2000 parts of H, and 1000 parts of O, and certain conditions 
of temperature, pressure, etc., and never arrive at the most 
distant glimpse of the peculiar nature, as defined to experience 
by its qualities, of H 2 O. And so it is with every real Thing. 
To enumerate most exactly the number of its constituents, 
and to make the most accurate and beautiful geometrical ar- 
rangement of these constituents, is never the equivalent of 
knowing the kinds of ways in which the reality compounded of 
these constituents will affect the mind through the senses. In 
most cases, indeed, these computations have no conceivable 
necessary relation to the most obvious and important quali- 
ties of things. And where they do seem to afford some quan- 
titative formula which may lay claim to a law, we can al- 
ways press our questions backward until ignorance permits no 
reply to be made to it in the name of science. Why a + b -f- c> 
rather than x + y + z, should have such a color, or such a 
smell, or such a taste, may be answered in terms of number, 
in one sphere of reality; but the problem, when seemingly 
solved in terms of quantity, will surely recur in a yet more 
obscure and unmanageable form, in terms of quality. 

The ultimate explanation, therefore, of all the qualities of 
things must be found in the kind of a being that Nature is. 
The Being of the World is the supreme qualifier, the lord and 
master who controls, and distributes, and gives and takes away, 
the qualities which make the natures of the particular Things. 

One of the most surprising and fruitful of the efforts of 
modern science to escape from the thralls of a doubtful or 



218 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

worn-out metaphysics, has "been the way it has dealt with the 
category of Force. This category is most distinctly the out- 
growth of personal experience, and most inseparably connected 
with a consciously feeling-full experience. It is no wonder, 
then, that those who would find satisfaction in a mechanical 
view of the world which should completely dispense with the 
categories, desire to drop the word entirely out of their scien- 
tific vocabulary. And, indeed, there are certain valid reasons 
for the desire. The very clinging of the need of a dead or 
decaying metaphysics to its roots is one of these reasons. 
Science properly desires not to take sides in obscure metaphysi- 
cal disputes, especially by way of incorporating any one side 
into the language which it is required to use for scientific pur- 
poses. Besides this, the variety of conditions, as to relations 
of time and space, and as to the effects measurably accom- 
plished, under which Nature's forces manifest themselves, 
makes it more useful to substitute certain terms which definitely 
incorporate into themselves some of these conditions and 
effects. Force is an exceedingly vague and general term. It 
may be used with seeming propriety, of the masses of the 
heavenly bodies, of the nervous centers, and of collections of 
souls, dead or alive, in present or in historical social rela- 
tions. It is an advantage, which metaphysics need not be 
asked to pardon, to ignore the category of force, and to employ 
such terms as energy, work, foot-pounds, or other terms of 
dynamical import. 

At the same time it must not be forgotten that all these 
terms, and all similar terms, have no explanatory value at all, 
as applied to individual things or to the World as a whole, 
without the assumption that the experience from which the 
conception of force is derived, tells to man the truth about 
the nature of Eeality. Only as it is filled full of forces, that 
are ceaselessly acting and reacting, and that thus become the 
true causes of all motions and of all other forms of change, 
does Nature have any semblance of reality. On other terms, 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 219 

the connections of ideas in the most fanciful of dreams would 
be more real than are the connections of things in a Nature 
robbed of its forces. 1 

" If now we analyze more carefully this dynamical concep- 
tion of the world which modern physical science has adopted, 
it seems to involve the following particulars: (1) The world 
of things is known as having some sort of unity that is refer- 
able to the conception of Force; (2) this unity comprises, 
however, a vast number of particular beings that must be 
regarded as in possession of, or as centres of, definite and 
measurable amounts of this force; (3) these particular be- 
ings, — vehicles of energy, or centres of force, — as they change 
their relations to one another in space, or their internal con- 
dition (the relations of the molecules, or atoms, or ions, that 
compose them), must be thought of as increasing or diminish- 
ing in the amounts of work they are doing; (4) the change in 
the amounts of work done by these particular beings is to 
be regarded as caused by the redistribution of the One Force 
of the world; (5) all changes of relations and conditions, which 
take place through this ceaseless redistribution of the World's 
Force, are in accordance with certain ideal limitations (that 
is to say, they are not haphazard, but are according to laws) ; 
and, finally, (6) thus does the World acquire a Unity which 
is both dynamical and ideal, because it consists of a vast num- 
ber of beings that are doing work upon one another, but in some 
fashion that has respect to a set of regulations and, it may 
be, to some common goal or end." 

The denial of any one of these six assumptions would ap- 
pear to mar and make less effective, as an explanatory prin- 
ciple, the scientific conception of a living and forceful Nature. 
The truth cannot be concealed that certain elements of this 

i The fuller treatment of this category, as in use by modern 
science, is to he found in Chapter X. " Force and Causation " (A 
Theory of Reality, pp. 253-293), from which the quotations intro- 
duced here are taken. 



220 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

conception are as ideal in character, and as figurative in their 
form of expression, as are the conceptions of myth and poetry 
when dealing with the same facts of experience. But' science 
claims a peculiar value for its conception of Nature because 
it is based solely upon observed facts. Let us, then, ask again 
the often-repeated question: What are the real facts of actual 
human experience with that system of things which is called 
Nature, or the Universe, or the World? All that the senses 
assure us, is simply this: " (1) Material things are, in fact, 
constantly changing both their external relations to one an- 
other in space and also the internal relations of their constituent 
parts; (2) these changes are measurable and comparable for 
purposes of theoretical or practical convenience." Or, the gen- 
eral facts of human experience with things may be expressed 
as follows : " Of a number of physical beings, A, B, Q, D, 
etc., existing together in time, their simultaneous or succes- 
sive changes are observed to conform to some formula, such 

as x=A Y; or x varies as -y/y. The cause of this uniform 

mutually dependent behavior of A, B, C, D, etc., is thus declared 
to be found in their common possession of one (or one kind of) 
so-called e energy'; — namely, Eg or Eh (energy due to gravi- 
tation, or energy that is called heat). And, next, the prin- 
ciple, or formula, is spoken of as the law of that particular 
kind of energy (the formula, L, which is the rule obeyed by 
the peculiar kind of energy, Eg or Eh)" 

"But, further, it' is learned by experience that when the 
memorable changes in the internal condition or external rela- 
tions of A are increased or diminished by a certain number of 
units of the standard; these corresponding changes increase or 
diminish in the internal condition or external relations of B, 
— provided that A and B are in the proper relations and are 
the two bodies exclusively to be considered. What is true of 
A and B, is also true of A and C, of B and C, and of A and 
D, etc.; and so on, until all the beings concerned (A, B, C, T>, 
. . . .N) are considered in all of their possible relations. Hence 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 221 

the warrant for that figure of speech which regards E as a 
gross amount of an entity called 6 energy/ that may be re- 
distributed continually amongst A, B, C, D, etc., by being 
transmitted, or passed over, from one to another." 

When, then, such clear thinkers as Tait and Clerk-Max- 
well assert that " energy has been shown to have as much 
claim to objective reality as Matter has," (Tait) ; and yet, 
" energy we know only as that which, in all natural phenomena, 
is continually passing from one portion of matter to another" 
(Clerk-Maxwell), we must consider them as dealing in con- 
venient figures of speech. The impossibility of any such 
actual transaction, however, follows from the very nature of 
force; and no meaning valid for reality can be given to any of 
the expressions that follow this figure of speech without re- 
ferring back to the original experience to which the genesis 
of the entire conception of force has been traced. Out of 
the same unwillingness to recognize the full significance of 
the ideal elements and implications which, of necessity, de- 
termine the scientific conception of Nature, comes the demand 
for explanation of changes as due to " pressure " and " strain," 
and the refusal to recognize the possibility of actio in distans. 
" There is," says Professor Challis, " no other kind of force 
than pressure by contact of one body with another." " Forces 
acting through void space are inconceivable, nay absurd," says 
Du Bois-Eeymond. As though, forsooth, the very conception 
of force were not thoroughly interior and metaphysical, and 
its action from, or distribution over, a space of the one-thou- 
sand millionth of an inch as unrepresentable by any sense, as 
from or over a thousand million miles! 

Similar strictures must be applied to all scientific concep- 
tions connected with the " storing of energy," or doctrines of 
" strains " between or within the atoms, or of the " energy of 
position." These conceptions, too, conceal immensely valu- 
able and convenient figures of speech ; and when stated in terms 
of mathematical formulas they are the indispensable means 



222 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

for enlarging and enriching our scientific conception of Nature 
as some sort of a totality which requires a real Unity of 
Force. 1 But the meaning of all this for a Theory of Reality, 
statable in terms of human experience, gleams through the 
celebrated dictum of Newton : " Gravity must be caused by 
an agent acting constantly according to certain laws." And 
what is true of this particular force is true of all natural 
forces. If they all, whether by their co-operation or by their 
conflict, and whether in a longer or a briefer time, and whether 

*" To illustrate by a single example: Certain compounds of 
Nitrogen, Hydrogen, and Chlorine (as N H 2 01. and N H Cl 2 ), 
are explosives; while perhaps the most astonishingly explosive of 
all compounds is that of Nitrogen and Chlorine N Cl 3 . Now 
Nitrogen and Hydrogen get along comfortably enough together, 
and so do Chlorine and Hydrogen; as in the case of N H 3 or H CI 
and other compounds of Chlorine, — all of which are eminently 
stable and ' safe.' But the discovery of the explosive character 
of N Cl 3 was so dangerous an affair that it quite wrecked the 
health of the chemist who made it, through the state of constant 
anxiety in which he was kept by his investigation. Now we do 
not give any adequate explanation of the tremendous energy dis- 
played by N Cl 3 when we merely speak of it as ' stored ' either in 
the N or in the CI; or when we declare it to have been put into 
either of them by effecting this combination as N Cl 3 . The ulti- 
mate fact appears to be simply this: somehow the natures of N 
and of CI are such that when they are for the time being united, 
they easily part company, and develop in the act of parting and 
reunion an enormous amount of energy. This idea, or rational 
explanation of the complex resultant of the nature of N, of the 
nature of CI, and of the natures of both in their relations to each 
other, and to the other elements with which they unite on 
leaving each other, is concealed by chemical science under the 
figurative expression, — 'chemical affinities.' But 'affinities' are 
never mere forces. ' Affinities ' is a word that stands for forces 
that have preferences. Affinities are exercised by beings that 
have, belonging to them, immanent ideas in control of the forces; 
and their ideas dictate to the forces the terms on which they shall 
do their specific amounts and kinds of work. Without all this 
equipment of 'immanent ideas,' the behavior of things, chemically 
considered, cannot be understood or explained." 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 223 

within a limited space or throughout infinite space, succeed 
in realizing the unity of particular beings, which we call the 
One World; then they must all be particular forms of the 
One Force, and the laws they follow must be conceived of as 
really the ideas and ideals controlling this One Force. 

In a word, the moment that the physical and natural sciences 
transgress the limits of a simple attempt to tell the bare his- 
tory of the phenomena they observe, they become metaphysical. 
They become this when they apply mathematical ideas to 
Nature, in the large. They become this more abundantly when 
they find all the forces capable of being considered as somehow 
constituting a Unity of Force. They become this yet more 
abundantly, when they regard this One Force as capable of 
accounting for the ceaseless production and destruction, and 
the ceaseless changes in the natures and relations, under laws, 
of the infinite number of particular beings in this One World. 

We conclude, then, that all the language which the modern 
physical and natural sciences employ to express and to de- 
develope the conception of Nature, in the large way, amounts 
to endowing the One World-Force with manifold controlling 
ideas. Some of these ideas we seem to ourselves clearly to 
discern, others dimly, and still others we can only conjecture; 
while about the deeper lying ideals which this World-Force 
may be realizing, there may remain overshadowing doubt, 
or impenetrable darkness. And now let us gather together the 
elements of this conception of a Cosmos, or natural World- 
Order, and try to express it in terms of personal experience. 
Viewed in its ontological aspect, all the growth of man's sci- 
entific discoveries reveals the Being of the World (the "Na- 
ture " which philosophy sometimes calls the " World-Ground") 
as a Unity of Force, that is constantly distributing itself 
amongst the different beings of the world so as to bestow upon 
them a temporary ^^{-independence, while always keeping 
them in dependent inter-relations, for the realization of its own 



224 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

immanent ideas. But this is to make Nature pre-eminently 
Self -like; it is the Nature which serves as the Ground of all 
the world's self-like things. 

The modern theory of Evolution, as it is introduced into 
every form of the sciences, both physical and psychological, 
and into the metaphysics, which they all both assume and sup- 
port, does not lessen but greatly increases the strength of 
the evidence for such a theory of reality. Evolution, as a 
merely descriptive history, a purely mechanical theory of what 
may be conceived of as happenings in millions of seons of 
time past, has only the value of a logically consistent dream. 
But if it is to serve as an explanation of a real World, with 
its actual events and eventful and ceaseless changes, evolu- 
tion must be both dynamical and teleological. That is, it must 
assume the co-operative working of vast and complicated forces, 
in boundless spaces and through infinite stretches of time, in 
accordance with immanent ideas, and for the actualizing of 
immanent ideals. To the consideration of the extent and value 
of the conceptions of plan and final purpose, etc. — the tele- 
ology — which the doctrine of evolution involves, we shall re- 
turn again and again. 



CHAPTER XI 

PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 

The process which consists in making distinctions, and 
which we have called " diremptive," does not stop when the 
Self is known by itself as apart from, and yet actively and 
passively related to, other selves and to things. In many of 
its aspects and relations, this Self is known as a thing like 
other things. It is not so much an embodied soul, as an en- 
souled body. But further distinctions inevitably take place 
which are interior to the complex nature of this thing-like 
Self. Some parts of the body — for example, parts of the limbs 
and trunk — are perceived by sight on the same terms as ac- 
company the visual perception of all wholly external objects. 
At least, after a certain stage of mental development has been 
reached, considerable parts of the body may be lost without 
manifest impairment of the experiences essential to a Self. 
In rare cases, knowledge of any material thing through several 
of the most important of the senses has been from birth, or 
from early years, " quite shut out " ; and yet a rich self -devel- 
opment has been achieved without their aid. In all cases, more- 
over, only certain parts of the bodily organism have any self- 
feeling localized in them; other parts are not known in any 
way by the individual knower as belonging to himself. This 
is pre-eminently true of just that portion of the organism — 
the central nervous system — which modern science knows to 
be most intimately and essentially related to all those conscious 
activities on which the very formation of self-hood depends. 

It is, therefore, not only a matter of natural necessity but 
even of irresistible rational inference, that the " diremptive 
process " should end in somewhat sharply distinguishing between 
the body that is mine and my own true Self. To state the 

225 



226 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

truth in other terms: Certain experiences are inevitably and 
properly organized into a more refined conception of Self- 
hood such as expresses its true meaning and real nature; 
■ — while certain other experiences are regarded as more or less 
accidental and even entirely separable from the conception 
of Self-hood. It is a fact which belongs to the race's most 
ancient history and which is a matter of universal testimony, 
that men have conceived of the soul, or mind, as separable 
from its body, and even as able to continue its existence after 
the death of the body. Indeed, some of the chief difficulties 
with this doctrine which science and sound sense have to con- 
tend with, are found in the fact that primitive and unenlight- 
ened peoples cannot even tolerate the possibility of the soul's 
ceasing to exist at all. 

Another preliminary consideration presents itself at this 
point. To this soul, or spirit, which may be regarded as dis- 
embodied, or at least as separable from its present organism 
and temporarily united with some other thing-like existence, 
the character of a substantial, or even a material entity, is 
readily given. The conception is hypostatized. To under- 
stand the term, " a soul," as a mere abstraction, and to at- 
tempt to cover all its experiences with the vague and empty 
words, — a " stream of consciousness " — is, indeed, for genuine 
scientific psychology, a complete failure and a patent folly. 
But to common-sense the same attempt is inconceivably ab- 
surd. It becomes, therefore, the most important task for a 
metaphysics which aims to construct a rational theory of 
reality on a basis of experience, to determine what kind of 
reality belongs to that part of the Self which is popularly 
called " mind," " spirit," or " soul." 1 

As has already been intimated, neither the view which makes 

i For the fuller discussion of this branch of metaphysics, see 
the author's Philosophy of Mind (Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1895) 
and various passages in "Psychology, Descriptive and Explana- 
tory " 



PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 227 

the mind an entity after the analogy of some material sub- 
stance, nor that which resolves it into a mere abstraction, is 
true to the metaphysics of experience. There are two well- 
established truths which contradict both these views. These 
truths, considered both as a matter of inquiry and as systems 
of conclusions, are expressed by the words " dynamic " and 
" evolutionary." The mind, or soul, is known to itself, as every 
other reality is of necessity known, in terms of activity, as 
having form and being under law, and as subject to a process 
of development. Or to express the truth of experience in a 
more pronounced way: The Self, regarded from the interior 
point of view, — i. e., in its real and essential nature, as mind, or 
soul — is a will that is realizing its own ideas in a course of 
self-development. Without this self-activity no real Self can 
exist; with its co-operation real Selfhood is achieved, more or 
less completely in time; for selfhood is not a ready-made gift 
of nature, but the resultant of a process, peculiar to itself, 
and which may properly be called a self-development. 

When from the point of view assumed by psychological sci- 
ence the attempt is made to discover those forms of activity 
in which consists the essential nature of a Self, the first to 
appear is ^/-consciousness. But the awareness of one's be- 
ing, and of being in such a state and in such relations to 
other beings, is no passive condition. The rather is it a pe- 
culiar expression of the will, with a content of feeling and 
ideation which is not only apprehended under terms of qual- 
ity, quantity, and relation; but which is somehow appropriated 
to the Self as its own experience. What this self-appropria- 
tion, as experienced, actually is, can never be described in 
other terms than those which appeal to the same experience. 
To know what it really is to be self-conscious, one must actu- 
ally have been repeatedly conscious of one's Self, as dis- 
tinguished from other things and other selves. No mere logi- 
cal description can make clear, apart from experience, the 
true nature of such an experience; and no logical juggling 



228 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

with the abstract conception of self-consciousness can make 
other than it really is, the actual experience of being self-con- 
scious. Finally, only by being self-conscious, as just that form 
of activity which it really is, can any being become a Self; 
and only as the characteristics of the higher forms of self- 
consciousness are more or less completely attained, can self- 
development be achieved. 

But, strictly speaking, a single, complex activity, or state, 
of self-consciousness is only good for the knowledge that " I 
am " ; and that " I am here-and-now " in such or such rela- 
tions, and self-active in such or such particular ways. But 
reality requires some kind of continuity of existences. Gen- 
eral metaphysics has already taught us that in order to be a 
real and self-identical A, the existence so designated must 
pass through a series of conditions or states which define its 
peculiar nature — such as A lt A 2 , A 3 . . . .A.. This metaphysical 
truth applies to the Self in a very especial way; since its iden- 
tity becomes in thought and imagination the type of all the 
self-sameness which is possessed by other selves and by self- 
like things. When, now, the ground is sought in experience, 
which affords to the Self this needed continuity, and which 
enables it to know that is indeed a real Self, it is found — 
although only partially — in the activity of memory. But the 
memory of a true Self is no mere repetition of resembling 
states in the so-called " stream of consciousness." Neither 
is it mere recollection; if by this be meant simply the recall 
into consciousness of ideas that serve for practical purposes 
as representatives of experience already had in past time. 
The memory of a true " mind " must be what has elsewhere 
(p. 9 Of.) been called " recognitive." Eecognitive memory in- 
volves the knowledge that " I was," " then-and-there " ; and the 
conviction that " I " who now remember was then the " I " who 
had the original experience. In a word, there is a confident 
appropriation of the two experiences, the original and the 
representative, to the same Subject, or Self. 



PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 229 

But of all the countless thousands of experiences in past 
time, the active mind can bring into consciousness by recog- 
nitive memory only a small handful, grasped together as it 
were, at any one time. " One thing at a time," seems to 
be the sort of a rule under which it is placed when it strives to 
recall the past most clearly, completely, and intelligently. And 
whatever theories are entertained as to the indelible char- 
acter of recognitive memory, on the one hand, or as to its 
dependence upon the integrity of the nervous areas and tracts 
of the central nervous system, on the other, the fact remains 
that the knowledge of one's being and doing as a Self, in the 
past, is exceedingly fitful and incomplete. In fact, it is true 
of the earlier years of this life, not only that I cannot 
remember, " I was a Self " ; but it is also true that I was no 
real Self at that time. I was becoming a Self; and as in other 
similar matters of development, it is impossible to say just 
when this process of becoming was far enough along to justify 
a claim to have realized its end. When does the human child 
achieve a real self -hood? In most cases, perhaps in all, no 
observer can say; and science gives us no general rules which 
enable us to determine a priori all individual cases of develop- 
ment. A self-conscious existence, as established to itself by 
this kind of its own activity, must be symbolized in some such 

such way as the following : 8 ± S 5 S 50 Sx Su. 

Thus the reality of a Self, which is established solely by 
memory, whether of its own or of others, — parents, nurses, 
friends, — is that of a being which springs into existence for 
a moment, only to fall out of existence again for a much 
longer time. Such a view, however, destroys all the principle 
of continuity, as this principle is necessary to give any real 
identity or actual development, to the human mind. 

It would seem, then, that something which abides must be 
interposed between the "I am," which self -consciousness can 
at any moment establish, and the " I was," which depends 
upon the fragmentary and fitful action of recognitive memory. 



230 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

" I have meanwhile been " — expresses the knowledge which 
appears necessary to join these " moments " in the life of the 
Mind into such a compact whole as that they ma}^ amount 
to a knowledge of its real nature, actual development, and 
place in that Nature which is ascribed to the world as a whole. 
But how shall any one know that he, as an individual, has 
"meanwhile" existed — that is, throughout the time which has 
elapsed between all experiences which memory can recall? 
Self-consciousness cannot furnish this knowledge; memory can- 
not furnish it. Indeed, such is the very nature of memory 
that it could never complete even the picture of such an en- 
during mental existence. A memory of all memories, and so 
on to an infinity of states, which must be grasped together 
in one memory, would be needed for the fulfillment of such a 
demand as this. And, in truth, we only know our own ex- 
istence, " all the meanwhile," in the same way in which we 
know the continued existence of all beings throughout longer 
or shorter times, and in different places as they are moved 
and located here and there. And this is by rational inference. 
Inasmuch, however, as we know ourselves with an immediacy 
and clearness which we cannot extend to other selves, and 
much less to other things, it seems even more absurd to suppose 
that the reality of the mind's life depends upon the memory 
of its individual experiences. The conviction which attaches 
itself to this sort of inference is intensified and confirmed by 
the growth of knowledge about ourselves. For it is found that 
numberless experiences, hitherto forgotten, are constantly be- 
ing remembered; and some of these experiences, when remem- 
bered, are known as really occurring in the past time with 
all the strength of conviction which belongs to the most fre- 
quently repeated and well-assured memories. The testimony of 
others is added to that of our own mind ; they can describe the 
signs which showed to them what was interior to ourselves, in 
terms which are at once recognized as true to the mind's actual 
life ; and the same thing cannot be done for any other form of 



PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 231 

life that' is not of the same species. When a friend stirs up 
my slumbering memory, or clears up my disturbed memory, as 
to something which I thought, felt, or did, in the remote 
past, he furnishes me with an argument for my own existence 
in the meanwhile as the same mind, which is quite superior to 
any argument which men can give to each other to prove 
the continued existence of any self-same animal, or species, 
or inanimate thing. Moreover, I have constantly with me this 
resourceful major premise for all this kind of argument : " Is 
it likely that I, who can remember so clearly experiences which 
I confidentially attribute to my same Self, on this side and 
on that of forgotten experiences, really ceased to exist ? " The 
instant I recall any of this " meanwhile," I identify myself 
as having been really existent in a certain moment of that 
same "meanwhile." 

It is not strange, then, that the general problem of identity, 
of a certain kind of continuity for individual real existences, 
has raged about the Self, as a self-conscious, recognitively re- 
membering, and rational Mind. The world of things may be 
illusion, may be called Maya, in defiance of common-sense 
and of science. Man's confidence in any continuance of the 
spiritual principle of his existence after the death of the body 
may dissolve before scientific difficulties or religious doubts. 
The mind may strive to dispense with mere abstractions, and 
to gain a reputation for positive, scientific discrimination, by 
refusing to recognize itself, by analyzing all its own experi- 
ence into disparate elements in a so-called "stream of con- 
sciousness." But if it continues to be self-conscious, and to 
remember, and to reason, it cannot deny some kind of reality 
and identity to itself. For in the last resort, that reality is 
the actual performance of these activities; and that identity is 
the matter-of-fact identification which takes place in every 
act of self-consciousness, of recognitive memory, and of ra- 
tional inference. 

Let, then, this important distinction be regarded as estab- 



232 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

lished; it corresponds to the distinction which the most trust- 
worthy knowledge of man compels him to make. The distinc- 
tion is, in fact, actualized and more and more confirmed by the 
growth of all human knowledge. It has been shown that Things 
are known to man as " more or less self -like." Some of them 
are more like, and some of them are less like, what he knows 
himself really to be. Only in terms of self-likeness are they 
known, or knowable, to man at all. Of the higher species of 
animals, there are certain which are so amazingly like selves 
that we scarcely know where, in some respects, to draw the 
lines between the characteristics of their natures and those of 
our own. But there are many other kinds of things, to which, 
although they behave as though they were wills realizing im- 
manent ideas, we do not dare to attribute any separate con- 
sciousness, so to say. Only in the human species is the full- 
ness of self-hood found' in actual existence. But man is a 
Self, whose very nature is known to himself as an organism 
with a mind, or soul; or as an ensouled organism. And it 
is only when he distinguishes between this organism, with its 
merely " self-like " existence and behavior, and the self-con- 
scious and rational principle which is known as the Soul, or 
the Mind, that he comes to discern in its true and essential 
essence, the reality of his own selfhood. Others are more or 
less self -Wee; man is the true Self. But when the question 
is pressed : " In what does the reality of the Self consist ? " 
or, " What is it really to be a Self ? " no other answer can be 
given than that which faithfully and, as fully as possible, 
describes the Self in a dynamic and evolutionary way. This 
is, however, the only way in which any reality is known; the 
marks of its being are its varied forms of action under all 
sorts of relations. To be a self-conscious, remembering, rea- 
soning Mind, with all the feelings which incite, guide, and ac- 
company these activities, is to establish in the highest degree 
the claim to real Self-hood. 

The important part which the peculiar feelings belonging 



PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 233 

to the individual Self play in the constitution of its self-hood, 
cannot be overestimated. But this is only as they come under 
the rule of those essential activities of the mind which have 
just been described as creating and developing the reality of 
every true Self. Mere feelings, or feelings, as such, however 
tinged or saturated they may be with either pleasurable or 
painful sensations, are not enough for such a creation. Feel- 
ings must be recognized by self-consciousness, be remembered 
as belonging to the same subject, and projected backward and 
forward by activities of imagination and thought as involving 
the interests of this same subject, in order to be the feelings 
of a true Self. The painful or pleasurable emotions, the as- 
piring or depressing desires, the noble or ignoble sentiments, 
must be self-appropriated — consciously and actually so — in or- 
der to be a part of such a Self. It is, therefore, the funda- 
mental and essential form of activity and development of the 
Mind, in which a true Self-hood is realized. 

It is not intended, however, to deny that countless important 
elements and subtle influences, of an organic or of a seemingly 
psychic sort, of which the Self never becomes aware, enter 
into its disposition, and have much to do with deciding what- 
sort-of a Self each individual shall be. The sources of such 
influences science attributes to heredity, to disposition, to or- 
ganic conditions, to the " sub-conscious," etc. ; and all this is 
done either in the interests of a soul-less mechanism, or to con- 
ceal ignorance of the real causes. All this is indeed quite loyal 
to the purposes of psycho-physical science, so far as modesty and 
frankness prevail over and control it all. But these influences, 
this organic environment, these so-called sub-conscious proc- 
esses, no matter how " self-like " they may appear in the eyes 
of the scientific mind, can never, of themselves, set such a mind 
into reality. It becomes real, only when it actually does those 
things in which its own real being essentially consists. All other 
beings, whether existent as germ-cells in parental bodies, or 
as cells which function as brain-cells within some particular 



234 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

body, may determine disposition, cause sensations, arouse and 
support the lower forms of psychic existence; but unless there 
results the process of development in which the mind's life 
consists, no real Self can come into existence. 

There are certain of the ideas and feelings which stand in 
a special relation of significance to the kind of a Self which 
the development of the mind's life secures to the human animal. 
These are those products of thought and imagination which are 
called " ideals," or " ideas of value " ; and those sentiments, or 
forms of feeling, which attach themselves to these ideas, and 
which may be classified as ethical, sesthetical, and religious 
sentiments. Without these ideas and sentiments, a mind that 
had the highest development of self-consciousness, recognitive 
memory, and reasoning power, — if, indeed, such a mind could 
exist without these ideas and sentiments, — could scarcely be 
classed as a complete human Self. To this conclusion lan- 
guage lends a naive but suggestive consent. A being, in hu- 
man, organic form, who develops no ideas of duty or moral 
sentiments whatever, is called by the popular voice " inhuman " ; 
and in scientific language such a being is called " defective," 
or even " a monster." Such beings are born with human bodies, 
but the minds connected with them never attain to a truly 
human self-hood. It is not customary to speak in so pro- 
nounced a manner of men who seem to be deficient in gesthet- 
ical and religious ideas and sentiments. But this may be only 
because this latter deficiency does not manifest itself in 
so startlingly horrid and dangerous ways as does the utter 
lack of moral quality in one having the semblance of a 
man. 

The three leading forms of the ideal in human nature, to- 
gether with the qualities which the experience of them seems 
to imply as existing in Nature in the large, are so intimately 
interwoven with one another that marked deficiency in any 
one of the three implies more or less of deficiency in the other 
two. All these ideas and sentiments have a sort of universal 



PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 235 

and universally obligatory character which renders them com- 
pulsory for every human being who would attain the highest 
and most complete type of the self-hood of a man. But more 
upon these subjects belongs to the chapters of the Philosophy 
of the Ideal. 

Important conclusions follow from the metaphysics of Mind, 
or doctrine as to "What it is really to be a Mind." Without 
development of mind, no true selfhood can come into existence. 
The human organism, when viewed by a true Self, would indeed 
appear to be self -like ; but disconnected from a developing mind, 
it could never really attain to true self-hood. The essence of 
self-hood is just these self-constituting, self-appropriating, 
self-developing activities, in which the life of the mind con- 
sists. 

First, then, stands the important inference that all Self- 
hood is a development. If " Nature " could confer self-hood 
upon any organic being, it certainly does not, in fact, act in 
this way. Indeed, we seem justified in saying that nature 
could not bestow all at once this incomparably estimable 
gift. At the first, the human organism, taken by itself, is per- 
haps no more self-like than is an amoeba. Taken in connection 
with such earlier signs of sensation and idealism as its move- 
ments signify, it is not so self-like as the developed horse or 
dog. But as soon as mind appears, with its mysterious activi- 
ties of self-consciousness, recognitive memory, and reasoning 
powers of the human order, the life of the true Self begins. 
But this life is not accomplished, and cannot be accomplished, 
without passing through the stages belonging to its natural 
evolution. It must have time to make its Self. Nor can this 
end be attained as the result of pressure of circumstances 
merely, or as the resultant solely of the character of the en- 
vironment. The mind must take a hand in its own develop- 
ment. True selves cannot come into existence without self- 
development. A large measure of self-help is needed for the 
making of a real Self. For self-hood is that kind of a de- 



236 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

velopment which is an achievement. Nature may determine 
the nature which things and the lower species of animals attain 
and transmit. But it is of the nature of mind to be more 
largely self-determined and, hence, to be self-made. 

And, second: the true Self -hood which active Mind alone 
really is, becomes, according to this metaphysical doctrine, a 
matter of degrees. If the reality of self-hood is a development, 
under the conditions of space and time, and necessarily de- 
pendent upon the actual exercise and growth of the mind's 
active life, — an achievement, rather than a ready-made gift or 
endowment; — then, of course, different selves differ in the 
degrees of their reality. Even the same human being is not as 
much of a real Self at one time as at another, of his existence. 
Born, indeed, with what philosophy has called " a potentiality," 
and what science refers to with equal vagueness as an "in- 
herited nature," the human baby is not yet a true Self; because 
it does not as yet have true mental life. It is not self-conscious;, 
it is not a Self and has no Self to be conscious of. It has no 
true memory; for there is nothing for it to remember, nothing 
of its past experience which it can appropriate to the same 
subject in the past, which is the now remembering subject. It 
cannot connect the gaps between the " I am " and any " I 
was " with a reasoned conclusion, such as " I have meanwhile 
been"; because it has no knowledge of itself as now existing, 
no power of self-identification, and no reasoning with which to 
weave the chain of continuity, or causal connection, between 
the present and the past. But if a normal child of human 
kind, it will develope a normal self -hood; and this normal 
self-hood will possess the specific characteristics of the human 
mind, and also a more or less rich content of individual feel- 
ing, ideation, and deeds of will. 

Somewhat startling conclusions follow from this metaphy- 
sical doctrine of the reality of a Mind. With every human 
being, there is a daily ebb and flow, and perchance a nightly 
complete cessation of the activities in which consists the reality 



PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 237 

of a true self-hood. To think of that reality whose peerless 
value consists in being active as mind, as though it were a fitful 
and perishing existence, may seem at first an insult to the pride 
of manhood, or even inconceivably absurd. But thought must 
face the facts and base its conclusions upon facts. To-night 
you will sleep and dream, or you will sink into a dreamless 
sleep. If you were never to come back again to the mind's 
waking life of self-consciousness, recognitive memory, and 
rational thought, but were just to dream on forever, would 
you not have forever lost the larger and more precious part 
of your self? But suppose you were never to awake from a 
quite dreamless sleep ; in what respect would the reality of your 
self -hood differ from nothing at all? Only one answer can be 
given; the purely negative concept of "the unconscious," and 
the largely negative concept of " the subconscious," whatever 
small value they may have for psycho-physical science, are, for 
defining the nature of Self-hood and asserting its reality, of 
absolutely no value at all. 

Another truth of the greatest practical importance follows 
from the same conception of the Mind's reality. The causes 
which regulate, and the conditions which limit, the various 
degrees of selfhood, or personality in its highest form of mani- 
festation, are indeed received without human willing, and 
are largely shrouded in human ignorance, as they come from 
the inexorable hand of Nature. The nature each man calls his 
own, so far as it depends upon inheritance, is not at all a 
matter of his choice. Neither can the individual in any meas- 
ure modify the essential characteristics of the particular species 
of which he is a member; or of that larger Nature which is 
the producer and environment for all particular natures. But, 
as we have already said, it is the essential characteristic of the 
human mind — its specific potentiality — to develope more or less 
of those forms of self-activity which enable it within however 
narrow limits, freely and intelligently to determine its own 
character, and to select its own environment. Active self' 



238 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

development characterizes the development of the true Self. 
Or to state the same truth in that language of common-sense 
which so often corrects or confutes the theories of philosophers : 
"Every man can make himself to be something of a man." 
Therefore, " Be a man, and ever more of a man," is no un- 
meaning exhortation, when viewed in the light of a consistent 
metaphysical theory as to the reality of the mind. In these 
activities of self-consciousness, recognitive memory, and rational 
inference, as they express the active aspect of mental life, lies 
the creative energy which must be evoked in order to secure 
this kind of reality. But the full significance of the fact is not 
grasped, or even suggested fairly, until we have considered the 
relation in which these activities stand toward the progressive 
realization of the ethical, assthetical, and religious ideals. 

Such a metaphysics of the mind, with its answer to the in- 
quiry, " In what does the reality of the person, or true Self, 
consist ? " places in a new light two problems which, of old, 
have been deemed most important by students of ethics and 
religion. These are the problems of Freedom and of Immor- 
tality. Indirectly, but none the less forcefully, does it urge 
upon the mind the problem of the essential Nature of that 
Being of the World, or World-Ground, which religion per- 
sonifies and worships as God. It will be remembered that God, 
Freedom and Immortality, gave to the critical philosophy of 
Kant the three great problems, in the interest of the better solu- 
tion of which he attempted to establish a sceptical theory of 
knowledge to be followed by confidence in a rational faith. 
But neither epistemology nor metaphysics, as we understand 
them, will allow us to accept the Kantian solution of these im- 
portant problems. Their fuller discussion belongs, indeed, 
within those fields of reasoning and speculation which still 
await consideration. Only in the light of those facts and ex- 
periences, with which morality, art, and religion concern 
themselves, can the thought frame conceptions corresponding 
to these three important words. But the philosophy of knowl- 



PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 239 

edge, and the theory of reality as applied to the mind, do fur- 
nish important new points of view from which to interpret the 
meaning of these problems. They also suggest, in no trivial 
way, the directions in which one may look for light to be 
thrown upon their solution. 

And, first, human experience with the essential nature and 
kind of development which are realized by the mental life, 
shows us that the mind is, in fact, se //-determining. At this 
point, however, a preliminary protest must be made against 
that use of the word " Will " which was much more current 
and well approved formerly than it has been of late. "Will is 
no separate faculty, to be distinguished apart from, or in addi- 
tion to, one or more other so-called faculties of the mind. 
From the psychologist's point of view the word is most cor- 
rectly employed when it includes the entire active aspect of 
the conscious Self. For this reason we have not hesitated to say 
that while the experience of the individual may be described 
by telling what sort of feelings " I have " or " suffer from " ; 
with what intellectual qualities I " am endowed," or " have 
cultivated"; each individual is justified, the rather, in declar- 
ing: " I am" essentially considered, a will. It follows from 
this that to speak of " the will " as being free, or not free, does 
not set forth in appropriate terms, the real problem. This 
problem is better expressed as follows : " In what respect, and 
to what extent, is the Mind — not as a self-like thing but as the 
true Self — actually self -determining ? " 

Whenever this problem of the mind's freedom is raised, as 
a pure question of metaphysics, there is a multitude of ob- 
jectors who virtually refuse even to consider it; because, as 
they affirm, science has discovered all self-determination to be 
inconceivable and even absurd. Xow, curiously enough, while 
there is a certain truth in this attitude toward the problem, 
what is generally understood to be the real finding of the 
physical and psychological sciences is the exact opposite of the 
fact implied in this attitude. Self-determination is indeed in- 



240 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

conceivable, in that it cannot be wholly explained as caused by 
any force, being, or relation, exterior to the self which deter- 
mines itself. On the other hand, however, every being, known 
to the physical and natural sciences — whether massive, molec- 
ular, or atomic, and whether inorganic, or organic, and plant 
or animal — is, of necessity, to some extent, self-determining. 
All scientific explanation assumes as a matter of course the self- 
determining nature of the particular beings, whose mutual re- 
lations and actions and reactions are to be explained. This 
does not mean that any of these beings behave themselves with- 
out paying regard to the other self-determining beings, which 
exist with themselves, within the same system. Quite the con- 
trary from this. But it does mean that scientific explanation is 
always forced to leave a residuum of the unexplained; and this 
residuum it locates in the self-determining natures of the be- 
ings whose actions and developments it observes. The determin- 
ations of science meet their inexorable limitations in the mys- 
tery of self-determination. Why, for example, does the atom of 
oxygen behave as it actually does behave in the presence of 
the atom of hydrogen? Because it determines itself to behave 
in this way. Or, if your scientific feeling of pride is offended 
by this, you may change the words about and say : " Because 
its nature determines it so to behave." But you are only con- 
fessing your ignorance in other no less confusing terms. And 
this same atom has been determining itself, during millions of 
years, under an inconceivable variety of the most complicated 
situations, to be self-active in the way appropriate to its nature. 
Now it has been joined with hydrogen atoms in a drop of 
water; now it has left them and devoted itself to the forma- 
tion of iron rust; again it has determined itself to be a part 
of 'the worm, on which has fed the fish, on which has fed a 
king. And so it has become part of the brain of some wise or 
— it is more likely — foolish, ruler of men. It is unnecessary, 
however, to go over this ground again. 

It will at once be said that what science insists upon claim- 



PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 241 

ing is this: Under similar conditions, all things determine 
themselves, or are determined by their natures, to behave in 
similar- ways. That is to say, all things obey laws ; over them 
all is the inexorable " reign of law." What this highly figura- 
tive language of physical science really means has already been 
made sufficiently clear. Things, as causes, in so far as their 
doings can be explained, seem to be controlled by immanent 
ideas. In saying this we do indeed double the mystery of the 
inexplicable self-determining Thing. Because, in the first 
place, unless some sort of consciousness be assumed as a 
guiding or controlling principle of the particular being, it is 
utterly impossible to conjecture what an idea " immanent " in 
it may be. And, in the second place, no one such idea could 
possibly account for the behavior of any particular thing all 
through the rapidly changing variety of circumstances, under 
which it is called upon to act. In fact, there is no actual event 
which comes under any one so-called law; there are no two 
events that are strictly similar — not to say, " identical," in the 
history of the World's development. If it is true that there must 
be important similarities in things, and essentially uniform 
ways of the behavior of things, or else there could be no order, 
and no real World; it is also true, that unless there could be 
ceaseless changes, new products and combinations in an end- 
less series, and ever new variety in the forms of co-operation 
active within, and between, the numberless beings of this same 
World, there could be for It no real development. So variously 
and mysteriously self-determining are even unconscious, mate- 
rial Things. 

But when science comes to consider conscious, living beings, 
especially the higher species of animals, it is forced to recognize 
a superior order and greatly enhanced degree of self-deter- 
mination. In spite of all the efforts of the chemico-physical 
sciences, and of all the objections from every quarter, these 
beings cannot be explained without the admission that they are 
to some extent consciously self-determining. With them con- 



242 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

sciousness counts as a force in determining their behavior and 
the changes of their relations. They are more self-like than 
are unconscious things; and they are correspondingly, in a 
different way and in a higher degree, self-determining. It is 
only matter of experienced fact to admit that their behavior is 
not so intelligible as viewed merely in the light of their ex- 
ternal relations, and without taking into the account any of the 
conscious states with which they respond to these external rela- 
tions. Two dogs of iron may be driven against each other so 
as to break each other in pieces; two angry, live dogs do not 
need any outside force to bring them into contact with each 
other. It is also matter of experienced fact, that living ani- 
mals, as influenced by their conscious states, do not behave in 
the same uniform way as do unconscious and inorganic things. 
They are more freely self-determining. To say that, if we 
knew all about this internal mechanism, we should be able to 
predict with certainty how conscious wills would express them- 
selves, and could then reduce to an exact science the be- 
havior of the animals, is to say something, either not very wise 
or else very doubtful. As more is known about the workings 
of a conscious being by way of observation, or imagination, 
doubtless it is possible better to predict just what that con- 
scious being is likely to do. In fact, all human life implies 
such opportunity for growth of knowledge about the lower 
animals and about men. But if science knew still more about 
the real nature of such beings, and especially about the high- 
est type of such beings, — the self-active, self-developing Mind 
of man, — it would probably be the readiest to confess 
that complete scientific knowledge of this mystery is not 
possible for finite intellects. The impossibility is not due to 
lack of a knowledge of the mechanism — such knowledge as 
science can cultivate about all its objects of investigation; it is 
rather due to the real nature of this peculiar kind of Object, 
which is essentially mysterious and so must be assumed as be- 
ing what it really is— an explanation of its own particular 



PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 243 

doings, while being in its own hidden nature forever inexplic- 
able and, therefore, unexplained. 

Science, naturally and properly enough, does not like to 
accept this conclusion of an unavoidable limit to its extension; 
for it abhors the inexplicable, and constantly beats against 
the barrier of the unexplained. But, again we repeat, the es- 
sential experience of science is to explain in part only, and 
this by assuming, in fact, what is unexplained. Moreover, 
the more science knows of the real nature of particular beings, 
and of the Nature of the World at large, the more there is 
to know which belongs to the as yet mysterious, and if not 
essentially inexplicable, to what is at least thus far unexplained. 

When, however, this interior force of consciousness, in its 
active form, reaches its highest expression in the human species, 
the most perfect conceivable type of a self-determining be- 
ing is presented to thought. Conscious self-feelings prompt 
this being to forms of activity which will secure for the Self 
its coveted interests. Conscious self-knowledge, and knowl- 
edge of other selves and self-like things, guide these activities 
to their chosen ends. But above all, conscious self-determina- 
tions in the form of the deliberate choice of ideals regulate 
through long periods, and even during its entire career, the 
development of the life of the Self. To this self-determining 
being, for the progressive realization of these ideals, all the 
material furnished by Nature, whether in the form of in- 
herited characteristics, or of limitations and opportunities of 
environment, may be made more or less subsidiary. And now, 
when science, physical or psychological, attempts to intro- 
duce within the nature of such a self -determining Self the con- 
ception of a rigid phenomenal mechanism, a chain of " other "- 
determining states, it throws no additional light on the meta- 
physical problem. The mechanical theory cannot even make 
a self-consistent history of the successive facts in that form of 
self-development, which is known as the life of a Mind. 

Whatever else is necessary to establish the conception of 



244 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

Freedom in a tenable and salutary way, belongs to ethics rather 
than to metaphysics. 

And to ethics and religion belongs the discussion of the prob- 
lem of the Immortality of the human Self, as Mind, when 
presented in any such form as to be of other than a purely 
speculative interest. Yet here also, metaphysics has some- 
thing to say in preparation of the way. It was formerly held, 
chiefly in the supposed interests of theology, that some kind 
of natural inability to perish — a sort of non-posse-mori — must 
be established for the human Self. The reality of the Mind 
must, therefore, be conceived of as consisting in some kind of 
an indivisible substance, after the analogy of a material atom, 
or of the indestructibility of mass as attributed to Nature, in 
the large. But such a substantial deathlessness, if it could be 
demonstrated a priori, would be as useless and vulgar as it 
would be secure. The prevalent dynamic view of the " nature " 
of all material substances so-called has banished this dead and 
worthless conception of what it is really to be, from even the 
lowest classes of the least self-like of things. There is no sub- 
stantial existence anywhere which corresponds to such a con- 
ception as this; and this conclusion is placed beyond a shadow 
of doubt, on the testimony with one voice of all the physical 
and natural sciences. 

What it is to be real, as all developed human minds are in 
fact real; or in other words, what it is to have and develope the 
life of personality, of true Self-hood; — this we have just been 
discovering, although only in part. For man is an ethical, 
artistic, and religious, as really as a self-conscious, cognitively 
remembering and reasoning being. But even when kept as 
closely as possible confined to the relatively bare fields of 
metaphysical inquiry, the problem of Immortality, in the light 
of modern science, changes front. In its new form, it may be 
stated as follows: Is there rational ground for the belief, or 
hope, that these actual forms of activity in. which the reality 
of the Mind now consists will be continued, after the bodily 



PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 245 

organization, with which until death they are dependency con- 
nected, has ceased to exist? 

To this question, a certain speculative but suggestive reply 
may be given in terms agreeable to the theory of reality al- 
ready developed. It is too commonly supposed that change 
is inimical to the reality and permanence, as one real being 
among others, of any particular thing. But it has been 
shown that in fact every particular thing is constantly chang- 
ing, both in respect of its internal conditions and states, and 
also in respect of its relations to other things. Its reality is 
not, then, inconsistent with change. But the reality of any 
particular being does require a certain consistency — the limits 
of which can never be set by a priori argument but must ever 
be learned from experience — with some idea or ideal. In other 
words, to continue really the same, the Thing must remain 
faithful to its Idea. But mere things do not consciously 
choose the ideas to which they must remain faithful; and the 
lower animals, so far as we know them, seem incapable of such 
a choice, especially if the idea is to take the form of a duty, 
a thmg of beauty, or an object of worship and obedience as 
divine. The teleological influence, or force, which determines 
the lower animals to a consistent development, a persistence 
in the progressive realization of a type, does not spring con- 
sciously from themselves. It is wholly determined for them 
by the Nature whose offspring and wards they are. Undoubt- 
edly, the same thing is largely true of human selves. They, 
too, are the offspring and the wards of the same Nature. The 
kind of being with which they are " naturally " endowed is at 
once more delicate, sensitive, and seemingly frail, than that 
of any other known existence. Self-consciousness is harder 
to develope and retain than is mere ^wasi-animal consciousness. 
Eecognitive memory lapses under organic or functional dis- 
turbances of the central nervous system sooner than does the 
automatism of the unrecognized recall of habitual ideas. The 
higher reasoning powers come latest to their full exercise and 



246 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

yield first to paresis or senile dementia. But on the other 
hand, this kind of reality in which the mind's life and devel- 
opment consists is signalized hy Nature in several emphatic 
ways. To live such a life is to be the realest of all that is real. 
No other existence, while it lasts, is so real, to itself and to 
other existences, as the spirit's life, the life of! the mind. 
Again, no other form of reality has the same value; no other 
is even comparable with it in value. 

Without going too far just at present in the way of personi- 
fying that Being of the World which is known to the physical 
and natural sciences as Nature, it may safely be said, that 
the immortality of the human mind depends upon Its Will. Na- 
ture has somehow shown itself able to produce such a type of 
self-determining and rational beings. Nature has endowed 
them with the potentiality, and has entrusted them with the 
supreme task, of such a development. Nature has endowed 
them, above all others of its children, with the capacity for 
developing themselves according to more or less clearly and 
nobly conceived ideals. The same Nature which has developed 
the human organism, and which momently weaves its wonder- 
ful texture by driving through it the shuttles of life and death, 
will in the end dissolve this same organism. Will the life 
and development of the mind be annihilated at the same time? 
This depends upon the Will of the same Nature which has 
built the body, endowed the mind, connected the two in the 
unity we call a Self, developed them in this connection, and 
finally destroyed the body. We must, therefore, re-examine 
and enlarge our conception of Nature, to see, if perchance, we 
can discover its will in this regard. 

There is one respect, however, in which not a few scientific 
objectors think they know enough about Nature's will with 
respect to man's hope of immortality, to decide the question 
by throwing it peremptorily out of court. It is Nature, they 
admit as a matter of course, which establishes and maintains 
that intimate connection of the organism with the mind's life, 



PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 247 

on which the continuance of the human Self depends. This 
connection, it is claimed, is now so well known by modern 
science, as to make it impossible for the mind to go on exist- 
ing after the organism has ceased existing. In reply, it must 
be admitted that the intimacy of this connection has been 
emphasized by our entire theory of knowledge, and by our view 
of metaphysics as a theory of reality. Only as an embodied 
mind, or an " ensouled " body, does the human Self exist and 
become acquainted with its fellow selves and with all self- 
like things. After the analogy of its experience with itself, 
as thus strangely compounded, it attributes mind-qualities or 
activities ("immanent" or conscious ideas) to all things; 
and on the other hand, it conceives of all the mind's qualities 
and activities as related to a world of material things. All 
this is indisputable fact of experience. 

But the making of the fundamental distinctions between 
mind and body, and the recognition of the superiority of mind, 
as the real Self, over mindless organism, is also indisputable 
fact of experience. This, too, is an indication of the Will of Na- 
ture with regard to the nature and development of the mind's 
life. Moreover, this " diremptive process " results in sep- 
arating the two parts of the one Self in such a way that the 
continued existence of the one no longer appears so absolutely 
essential to the existence of the other. Indeed, when analyzed 
from the purely scientific point of view, the connection between 
soul, or mind, and body, appears in no respect essentially dif- 
ferent from that which may temporarily exist between any two 
or more kinds of reality. Stated in terms of pure mechanism, 
it has only the value of a very imperfect and extremely doubt- 
ful descriptive history. When such known changes, as, for 
example, the desire to use a certain book in my library and 
the resolve to rise from my chair and take it down, occur in 
consciousness, I know that they are followed by changes in the 
relations of material things which correspond to the desire 
and to its resulting deed of will. Of the thousands of interven- 



248 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ing links between those known facts which go on within the 
organism, there are some of which I am fairly sure on scien- 
tific grounds; but others are matters only of uncertain conjec- 
ture, and must remain utterly hidden from any available means 
of observation or experiment. When, then, the attempt is 
made to give a metaphysical, or ontological, interpretation of 
these occurrences, and thus deal with them as the result of 
real beings, influencing each other in a causal way; the real- 
ity of the conscious and self-determining mind, and the actu- 
ality of its control over the body, takes precedence of all else 
that is immediately and clearly known, or knowable, about the 
entire complex transaction. 

Over the entire field of the dispute as to the possibility of 
human immortality, so far as physiological and psycho-physi- 
cal science has anything to say, the history of the last fifty 
years sheds an instructive light. At one time it seemed as 
though such scientific researches were destined to destroy the 
hope of a continued existence for the mind apart from that 
organism which, with it, makes the constitution of a human 
Self. After the debate had ranged and raged over the field 
of experience, both parties seemed to be exhausted and willing 
to retire with the verdict of a battle drawn, and not to be scien- 
tifically decided in either way. But of late — we have no hesi- 
tation in saying — the doctrine which affirms a possible, and 
even a probable, separate existence for the mind after the 
death of the bodily organism, has been gaining ground in 
experience. It is true, on the one hand, that modern physi- 
ology is constantly discovering new and important relations 
between the constitution and functioning of the different parts 
of this organism and the tendencies and specific functions of 
the mental life. Not only the more obvious and bulky of the 
internal organs, but seemingly insignificant glands, the chemi- 
cal condition of the blood, the presence of bacteria in unsus- 
pected places, and a hundred different abnormal conditions of 
the tissues, determine the character of the conscious states. 



PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 249 

Secret irritations in remote places of the body may upset the 
brain's functioning, and lead to melancholia, mania, or other 
insane conditions. But, on the other hand, these changes in 
nutrition and organic structure appear to be, in man's case, 
essentially like the processes which go on in every form of liv- 
ing substance. The living cells behave with a complete in- 
difference to the high service which they are to render by found- 
ing and guiding the self-conscious, self-determining, Mind in 
its unique course of development. Important organs may be 
lost, and from the theoretical point of view, they may be trans- 
portable from place to place, or from one human Self to an- 
other ; but if the more primary conditions of organic life can be 
secured, the mind continues, with a seeming indifference, to 
exist essentially unimpaired. One's stomach may give one pain; 
one's liver may impart to consciousness a tinge of melan- 
choly; one's heart may make one bold or timid; but none of 
these organs seem to have the power either to make, or to 
unmake, the reality of one's Self. 

All this, we are told, may be true enough, outside of the 
central nervous system; and especially beyond and below the 
gray convoluted rind which constitutes the hemispheres of 
the human brain. But is not the relation between Mind and 
Brain such that the impairment and destruction of the latter 
necessitates the impairment and cessation of the other? Again 
it must be admitted that, as to an intimate connection be- 
tween the functioning of this organ — or rather, collection of 
organs — and those activities in which the very reality of men- 
tal life consists, there can be no doubt. And from the scien- 
tific point of view, the connection, in order to be viewed as 
having any significance for reality, must be considered as a 
causal connection. 

About the conclusions which follow from the facts, and which 
affect the hope of immortality as dependent upon the meta- 
physics of Mind, these two truths must be kept constantly in 
view. And, first, those unique activities in which the develop- 



250 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

merit of the mental life essentially consists cannot possibly be 
conceived of as having an organic origin. For its life of 
sensation and motion the Self is obviously dependent upon the 
integrity of the organism; and since all the rest of the organ- 
ism, so far as it affects consciousness, reports itself in, and 
is controlled from, the nervous centres, this life of sensation 
and motion is most immediately dependent upon the integrity 
and normal functioning of the brain. But the more unique 
and uniquely essential activities, such as the mind attains, do 
not seem to stand in the same relation of dependence. With- 
out sight, one cannot know a visible world; without hearing, 
one cannot know the world of sound. But a Hellen Kellar 
may attain a more highly developed mental life than the major- 
ity of human beings who have normal faculties of hearing and 
sight. The Self-hood of such a person is, indeed, restricted in 
important ways, as respects its knowledge of other selves and 
self-like things. But as a self-conscious and rational Mind, it 
may show an amazing independence of these restrictions. And, 
in no case, can we conceive of any such relations between self- 
consciousness, recognitive memory, rational inference, and the 
moral, sesthetical, and religious sentiments and ideals, as will 
permit us to regard the mental life as accounted for by any kind 
of functioning on the part of any kind of organism. 

Second: modern cerebral physiology and surgery seem to 
be pointing the way toward a larger view of the relative inde- 
pendence of mind, of the hemispheres of the brain, and of 
an enlarged doctrine of the supremacy of mind over even 
these crowning structures of the central nervous system. If 
life can be kept going, the developed Mind, it would appear, 
can dispense with considerable portions of the brain substance, 
without surrender of those forms of activity in which its es- 
sential being is known to consist. Eecently, there have been 
cases of cerebral surgery without anaesthetics, in which the 
self-conscious life has proceeded without interruption, while 
parts of these hemispheres, most important for sensation and 



PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 251 

motion, have been largely excised. And when either disease 
or surgery makes the demand for a transference of function 
to other contiguous or corresponding areas of the substance of 
the hemispheres, no other form of stimulation and final con- 
trol is so powerful as that of the self-conscious, self-deter- 
mining mind. 

In a word, the old theological doctrine, which less than a 
half-century ago seemed so likely to be totally discredited by 
the physiological and psycho-physical sciences, is now gathering 
new evidence to its support from the discoveries of these same 
sciences. One may elect to say, with more boldness than one 
could a generation ago, that the human brain is the organ, 
rather than the producer, or true cause, of man's mental and 
spiritual life. Metaphysics can indeed give no demonstration 
of the immortality of the Mind. But metaphysics does so ex- 
pound its real nature as to show that the larger Nature, from 
whose womb it comes, and in whose bosom it reposes, has not 
revealed to modern science the impossibility of its being linked 
to a physical organism in a wholly separable way. Even sci- 
ence may soon come much more considerably than at present, 
to encourage the rational hope, in the individual, of achieving 
an immortal life. 



CHAPTER XII 

MATTER AND MIND: NATURE AND SPIRIT 

It is now time to bring together the metaphysical frag- 
ments of the preceding chapters, and once more attempt 
their union in one consistent theory of reality. We have hith- 
erto discussed the problems offered by particular Things, and 
individual Selves, both as organic existences and as self-devel- 
oping and self-determining Minds, with a view to answer 
the general question of metaphysics: What is it really to be? 
It has been shown that every existence has, on the one hand, a 
certain being-in-itself ; and, on the other, that this being is 
an existence within a system of beings, no one of which can be 
known, or even conceived of, as independent of the others. The 
term, " being-in-itself," in anything like the Kantian sense, 
may indeed justly be subject to objections. Things, as beings- 
in-themselves ("things-in-themselves ") cannot be spoken of 
as either postulated or conceivable. The very word " Thing " 
implies the correlate of cognitive activity. On the other hand, 
to claim that even those things which are best known, are 
dependent for their reality upon man's knowing them, is so 
shocking to common-sense, and so foreign to the findings of 
the psychology of perception, that the most extreme subjec- 
tivism cannot explain the term reality so as to give it consistency 
even in its own system of metaphysics. 

But minds, as truly although not in the same way as things, 
take their part in the Being of the One World. And like things, 
although not on the same terms, minds have a certain nature, 
or real existence of their own; while they are, of course, de- 
pendent upon things for their existence and for the character 
of their development ; and they are dependency related to each 



MATTER AND MIND: NATURE AND SPIRIT 253 

other in the social system. No human mind, or spirit, is known 
to exist, except as in and through the system of so-called mate- 
rial existences; nor can such a mind, or spirit, attain or express 
its typical characteristics without intercourse with other human 
minds, or spirits. Out of the same Being of the World, and 
as a product of its evolution, has come man, as mind; and all 
the spiritual developments of the human race in history. These 
are facts; and metaphysics, as a theory of Reality, must some- 
how manage to take them all into its account. It cannot, on 
the one hand, leave out of its reckonings the chemico-physical 
theories, in their efforts to discover how all kinds of things 
are constituted, and under what conditions they have come to 
be as science now actually finds them to be. If the chemico- 
physical sciences attempt to cover with their doctrine of forces, 
laws, and measured relations of space and time, the living 
organism with which the mind appears as connected, this 
doctrine must be welcomed, so far as its truth can be substan- 
tiated. On the other hand, all the researches of these sciences 
make an increasing impression of inadequacy, when they at- 
tempt to frame themselves into a theory of the quite unique 
reality, which is constituted and developed by the peculiar 
forms of activity in which the existence of the mind is re- 
vealed to itself directly; and indirectly, to other minds. Such 
activities seem to transcend all that can properly be ascribed to 
any Thing, or collection of things. 

How, then, shall Its Reality be conceived of, so as to make 
it appear capable, not only of evolving such a system of things 
and thing-like existences, as the World is actually known to 
be, but also of developing a race of beings which have such 
mental and spiritual characteristics as the human race is known 
to have gained and expressed during the course of human his- 
tory. The World, as far as man knows it, or can know it, is 
One. What sort of a One World can make itself one in such 
a characteristic way? 

In seeking for some satisfactory collective term, which shall 



254 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

seem to express the whole essence of the World's true Being, 
one has a choice of the four examples, which stand at the 
head of this chapter. Thus one may begin with the conviction 
that the conception of " Matter " can be made so full of con- 
tent as to serve for the needed explanatory principle. Then 
one will argue with one's self somewhat as follows: There 
are, indeed, individual human minds really in existence. But 
after sufficiently minimizing their capacities and emphasizing 
their limitations, one may conclude that the mysterious sub- 
strate of material things has within it the "promise and po- 
tency" of man's spiritual life, as well as of every other form 
of organic or inorganic existence. Thus Matter may be said 
to have made, or to have evolved, Mind. But when it is more 
clearly seen how much this conception of matter involves that 
is actually characteristic of mind, one may choose another of 
the several courses open to human thought: One may either 
regard mind as, so to say, unconscious or asleep, within matter 
(Mind is "immanent" in Matter); or else one may turn 
about the conclusion, and assert that it is mind which gives 
reality to matter and which accounts for all its evolutionary 
processes. In both of these cases, however, some collective 
term which is more comprehensive than either of the two, 
when they are brought into contrast or combined together, 
seems desirable. The word Nature offers itself as such a term. 
And now Nature, taken as a collective term, must include the 
essential characteristics of all things and of all human minds, 
if it is to afford the explanatory principle for both kinds of 
real beings. Things are, of course, natural evolutions, chil- 
dren of Nature, in the large. But so are human spirits as 
well. The difficult question then arises: Does the Spirit in 
Nature know Itself as Spirit ? Is Nature to be conceived of as 
a self-conscious and rational Spirit; and, as such, the sufficient 
Ground of all spiritual life and development. Or, is it only 
potential Spirit, which comes to actuality in the particular 
spirits of individual men? In a word: Is Spirit, as a col- 



MATTER AND MIND: NATURE AND SPIRIT 255 

lective term and applicable to trie whole of Nature, an impos- 
sible or even absurd conception? 

Let us now follow briefly along the path of these inquiries, 
in the order in which they have just been proposed. The 
word " Matter," in its collective use and as applied to all 
material existences, is confessedly a pure abstraction. There 
really are innumerable material existences, of an indefinite 
number of kinds, ceaselessly undergoing changes of relations, 
according to an indefinite number of so-called laws. But there 
is no such reality as Matter in general. Indeed, " it is proper 
to speak of the term matter, only as resulting from the second 
degree of abstractness, since it stands for a grouping of con- 
ceptions, each of which is derived from many individual acts of 
our experience with things." * Our inquiry, then, becomes : 
What characteristics of all material things are known to man, 
which are sufficient to explain the existence and development 
of human minds, in human history, as well as the evolution of 
things themselves? In a word: What really is this so-called 
matter; and what can it alone do? When we are told by a 
physicist like Sir William Thomson : " We cannot of course 
give a definition of matter which will satisfy the metaphysi- 
cian," our reply is : " But this is the very kind of a definition 
which the mind insists upon; because it is seeking to find a 
conception which embodies metaphysics, as a theory of reality." 

Now the most distinctive and important characteristic of all 
matter is its massiveness, or its quality of having mass; and 
from this, as secondary characteristics, inseparable from mass, 
are derived the qualities of solidity, inertia, momentum, weight, 
etc. But all changes in these secondary qualities do not affect, 
they rather assume, the continuity and unalterableness of mass. 
As formally constituted, any particular material body can 
be put out of existence; the characteristics of its energizing 

i See the Chapter on " Matter " in the author's Theory of 
Reality, from which the quotations, unless otherwise specified, are 
taken. 



256 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

may be profoundly changed ; it may be rendered quite unrecog- 
nizable by the senses which were once familiar with it; or it 
may be made impossible of recognition by any of the senses. 
But its mass cannot be annihilated or diminished. What 
now is meant when it is said that all matter has mass ? Plainly, 
it is meant at least to say that all material things are quantities 
•which may be measured; and which must be considered as 
measurable, whether man can get at them to measure them, 
or not. But this is not all which is true of matter as having 
mass; for space and time, considered as empty of all matter, 
are also measurable, and the measurements to which they can 
be subjected are much more " pure " than any which can be 
applied to masses of matter. Besides, we do not content our- 
selves with saying that matter is mass, — that, and nothing 
more. The rather is it defined as " that which has " the mass. 

If matter were simply massive, it would be dead; indeed, 
its mass could never be appreciated or measured. To get itself 
appreciated and to be measured, it must do something; and it 
must do something to our human minds, for we men, as minds, 
are the appreciators and measurers of matter, whether as 
"plain minds," in common-sense ways, or with all the mathe- 
matics and refined instrumentation of the modern physical 
sciences. 

Therefore, as Thomson and Tait tell us: "Matter is that 
which can be perceived by the senses, or that which can be acted 
upon by, or can exert force." And now, if we change both the 
" ors " in this sentence to an " and," we learn that matter 
is known by us through the senses as being acted upon, and 
also as exerting force. Force, or energy, must somehow be im- 
parted to mass, in order that matter may not be and remain a 
reality that counts for nothing — just dead, inert, and useless 
" stuff." Therefore, another distinguished physicist, Clerk- 
Maxwell, assures us in a sentence already quoted : " All we 
know about matter relates to the series of phenomena in which 
energy is transferred from one portion of matter to another, 



MATTER AND MIND: NATURE AND SPIRIT 257 

till in some part of the series our bodies are affected, and we 
become conscious of sensation." 

But it has already been made absolutely clear that the en- 
tire conception of force, or energy, as separable from things, 
or transmissible from one thing to another, is only a convenient 
figure of speech; and that to suppose that this figure of speech 
has its correlate in any actual transaction in the world of 
real things, is to suppose an absurdity. We are at once, then, 
compelled to agree with Du Bois-Reyrnond when he says: 
" Separately, Force and Matter do not exist " ; or with another 
writer who declares : " Force is the dynamic aspect of ex- 
istence, the correlate of Matter/' 

But to recognize mass and energy as the inherent and uni- 
versal characteristics of so-called " Matter " does not as yet 
endow the latter with a sufficient outfit of capacities and powers 
to account for the existence and development of the entire 
world as composed of things and of self-conscious, rational 
minds. For in order to produce and develope particular things, 
and species of things, this " lump-sum " of mass and energy 
must distribute, and arrange, and rearrange itself, according 
to ideas and in obedience to laws. Plain traces of a striving 
after ideals would also seem to characterize some of the paths 
followed in this process of self-evolution. But over and over 
again, in discussing the metaphysics involved in the very nature 
of every particular thing, there has been discovered the neces- 
sity for recognizing mind, as a force, in a form to which we 
have given the vague phrasing of an " immanent idea/' It now 
.appears that matter, without the necessary equipment of im- 
manent ideas, and of some sort of plan, concealed within it, or 
forced upon and dominating it from the outside, could no 
more build and develope a world of things and minds, than 
could some particular collection of molecules, or atoms, con- 
sidered as mere dead matter, or lawless energy, construct any 
particular thing. 

Mind and Matter must, therefore, somehow combine and 



258 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

co-operate, in order to account for a collection of existences and 
developments similar to that which belongs to the system known 
to men in the growth of the particular sciences. " Matter " 
must be something more than is ordinarily understood by mere 
matter; it must be matter, including some, at least, of the 
potencies of what man knows himself to be as a mind, if it 
is to serve man as the one explanatory principle of all the 
existences which are made into some sort of a unity by this 
same principle. Need it be said again that this effective Prin- 
ciple must be somewhat more than a first Premiss, or logical 
principle; it must be an architectonic and developing Force? 

The word matter, therefore, shall be abandoned; let us turn 
again to the word " Nature " as promising the suitable col- 
lective term for which we are seeking. And undoubtedly, if 
this word is made full enough of the right kind of content, it 
can cover a conception which will satisfy the mind as the basic 
truth in metaphysics. 

There are several reasons why the word Nature seems to be 
a much better word than matter to serve as a collective term 
for all that is necessary to explain the existence and history 
of things, animals and men, as they are all known by man, 
in the unity of the One World. Among these reasons the fol- 
lowing are prominent. In the first place; of the two terms, 
Nature is the more elastic and expansive. To deny the ex- 
istence of the immaterial, of that which really is not matter, 
is usually the sign of a narrow and dangerous bigotry in the 
doctrine of the physico-chemical sciences. For there is life, 
and consciousness, and self-conscious mind, in the world; and 
these existences will always be regarded in the popular apprehen- 
sion, as being non-material. With all their resources of micro- 
scope, and refined methods of chemical analysis, and of the 
detection of hitherto inappreciable physical operations, these 
sciences have never as yet succeeded in mastering the full ex- 
planation of the most insignificant living form, or even of a 
single living cell. The first conscious sensation still appears 



MATTER AND MIND: NATURE AND SPIRIT 259 

to be an event in the world's history, as unappreciable and un- 
statable in terms of physics and chemistry, as it appeared when 
these same sciences had not attained any of their modern con- 
quests over the field of matter : while to be really self-conscious 
and self-determining, as the developed mind of a man comes 
to be, is a triumph over the merely material, in the contrast 
with which, all the triumphs of the sciences of matter in their 
attempts to explain this mind, seem insignificant or absurd. 
At least, whatever certain individual enthusiasts among the 
physicists and chemists may claim for their discoveries, in the 
thoughts of the people and of the few who reflect, life, con- 
sciousness, and mind, cannot be covered by the term, Matter, 
when this term is properly employed. 

But the same lack of elasticity, as it were, and of expansive- 
ness, cannot be charged against the conception of Nature, 
when this is employed in the collective way. Indeed, most of 
those who would not think of calling consciousness and mind 
material entities, or even phenomena of the material order, 
vigorously resist any effort to take them out of the sphere of 
Nature. The super-natural, or ez/ra-natural is at present in 
favor with no manner of science, — not even with those theo- 
logians who are more anxious to make their peace with the 
" scientists " than with the vice-gerents of Heaven. Of course, 
however, this genial and expansive use of the word as a suffi- 
ciently comprehensive and — shall we not say? — energetic term, 
only raises again the same old question: What kind of a Na- 
ture must this be which can develope, not only so many forms 
of conscious life, but also a race of self-conscious and self- 
determining spirits? 

Another reason for the generally accepted preference of the 
word Nature as a collective term is undoubtedly to be 
found in the greatly superior appeal which it makes to the 
imagination. Many poets have always delighted to sing the 
praises of nature as the Giver of Life, the Inspirer, the Bene- 
factor, and even the Author, of genius and of all gifted 



260 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

minds; in imaginative literature, personified nature is the 
bountiful Source of the material goods which make men com- 
fortable and happy. Comparatively few have followed Lucretius 
and celebrated in poetry the affinities and separations and, as 
it were, social quarrels and " makings-up-again " of the atoms, 
in a purely materialistic way. It is true that the trained stu- 
dent of physics or chemistry both observes and imagines proc- 
esses in matter which are transcendently beautiful, mysterious, 
and worthy to excite admiration. It is no wonder that he is 
tempted to think, if matter can do this, why can it not do any- 
thing? Why can it not make itself conscious; make itself 
to feel and think; make itself to be a real Self, a self-con- 
scious and self-determining mind? It certainly weaves a body 
for this mind; and this body is intimately connected with 
the development of the mental life. But the truth remains 
that even the influences of such an exciting character for the 
scientific as well as the poetical imagination do not easily over- 
come the objection which the human spirit itself opposes to 
being considered as a product of what science observes, de- 
scribes and measures, as mere spiritless matter. When we 
say " Nature/' however, we seem again to recover the rights 
belonging to poetical license. All the unfathomable mystery 
of life, of consciousness, and of self-conscious mind, can be 
concealed, and ever lovingly fostered, under the protection of 
this term. The imagination is delighted with, and at the same 
time baffled by, this limitless atmosphere of mystery. As to 
matter; why I may hold it in my hand, may strike it with my 
foot, and buy and sell it in the form of visible and tangible 
things, or may measure, weigh, and otherwise manipulate it 
in my laboratory. But as to Nature, all this is quite another 
affair. 

There is a third reason for our preference of the word Na- 
ture as a collective, all-embracing, and all-interpreting term. 
It lends itself much better to the process of personification. 
'And this is, indeed, the supreme and most conclusive of the 



MATTER AND MIND: NATURE AND SPIRIT 261 

three reasons. Not only in a concealed and furtive way, in 
the terms of^science, but in an avowed manner, in the terms 
of poetry, religion and philosophy, in order to be considered 
a satisfactory collective term explanatory of both things and 
men, Nature needs to be personified — made Self-like — in a 
more complete and final way. Religion has done this by per- 
sonifying and deifying natural objects, and natural forces, of 
many varied kinds; but at last, in terms of monotheism, by 
creating the conception of an eternal and universal Spirit, 
God as Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer of the world. And 
early philosoplry, like all poetry, 1 regarded Nature as the Mother 
both gracious and terrible, of all things and all men. " For/' 
says Parmenides, " she rules over all painful birth and all be- 
getting, driving the female to the embrace of the male, and 
the male to the embrace of the female." 

It would appear, then, that human thought is on the whole 
reluctant to believe that man's spirit, and spiritual develop- 
ment, can have its origin in, or account rendered by, any prin- 
ciple which does not itself include the characteristics of Spirit 
in an essential and dynamic way. Since the word Nature does 
represent to thought and imagination a conception capable 

i Biichner in his enthusiastic poetizing and personifying of Mat- 
ter, proposes a song in its praise (see " Force and Matter," Eng. 
trans., p. 55) : 

"1st dem nicht, was ihr Materie nennt, 
Der Welt urkraftig Element, 
Aus dem, was immer lebt and webt, 
Empor zu Licht und Bewegung strebt? " 

But the terms in which Goethe makes Faust address the Un- 
knowable One, commend themselves much better both to poetry 
and to philosophy: 

"Who dares express him? 

The All-enfolder, 
The All-upholder; 
Enfolds, upholds He not 
Thee, me, Himself? " 



262 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

of such inclusion, it is held to be much preferable to the word 
matter. Consciousness, and self-conscious mind, if not all 
forms of life, demand the characteristics for their explanation, 
which man finds in himself as a self-conscious, self-determin- 
ing mind, or spirit. 

This na'ive conclusion of the popular reflection, which finds 
expression in so much of poetry and in the elaborations of 
philosophy, we hold to be also scientifically true. In evidence 
of this truth we shall at present only call attention to the fact 
that the use of the word Nature, by both science and philos- 
ophy, actually makes it inclusive of Spirit; and this is really 
why reflection has chosen this word as the more genial, plastic, 
and suitable term. 1 

As soon as the significance of the enlargement which is 
given to the conception of Nature, as a collective explanatory 
term, is duly recognized, the same distinctions have to be in- 
sisted upon anew. " The Absolute Whole divides itself again 
into two parts. These parts are not indeed separate and dis- 
tinct halves of a total sphere; nor can they be kept asunder so 
as to remain independent of each other for their more com- 
plete significance and their more effective action. The rather 
are they two interdependent aspects of the same totality as 
seen from two equally necessary points of view. These points 
of view are the more internal and subjective and the more ex- 
ternal and objective. Nature, regarded as an Absolute Whole 
(system of things and spirits, complete-in-itself) becomes two- 
fold; it is no longer simply nature as the common breeding- 
place of life, but as herself a Universal Life. Her being is 
no longer looked upon as the undifferentiated medium or soul 
in which all development takes place. She is herself the 
Ground — the inner principle of development. Nature is no 
longer just a system of things already formed, or considered 

i This argument is stated more at length in Chap. XVII, " Na- 
ture and Spirit," in the author's Theory of Reality, from which 
the sentences in quotation are taken. 



MATTER AXD MIND: NATURE AXD SPIRIT 263 

from the outside as a mere collection of data, arranged in a 
series, in unending time. She is an architectonic Force, form- 
ative and progressive according to ideas. Like the pure Be- 
ing of the Greek philosopher, she is both Subject and objects, — 
Maker and things made.'' Or as Spinoza in more modern 
times would express the truth : Nature has become in some 
sort divided against herself; her total Being includes natura 
n at mat a, and natura naturans; a gross lot of created things 
that may be arranged and observed as in a natural system (a 
visible, tangible nature) and a creative Nature, or invisible, 
intangible and spirit-like power of evolving, in varied systematic 
ways, such visible and tangible things. 

Thus has the metaphysics, both of philosophy and of science, 
recognized two groups of conceptions which must somehow 
be combined and made to work in harmony, if we are to have 
any collective term which will begin to hold the full content 
of the conception for which we are seeking. If Spirit, out- 
side of and aloof from nature, will not serve for such a term; 
then Nature that has no spirit in it, must be deemed equally 
impotent. For Xature, even when regarded as an eternal but 
unspiritual Force, does in fact produce by her supremest efforts 
something spiritual, or rather an indefinite number of spirits; 
and these spiritual beings come to understand her, and to sym- 
pathize with her, and to supplement her in her work of evolv- 
ing life and of driving man along his course in history. Xa- 
ture cannot then, since to be this kind of a force is of the very 
essence of what man knows as spirit, be really and completely 
" unspiritual." 

One of the more ardent and uncompromising of the advocates 
of the principles of scientific Naturalism 1 once declared : et For 
myself I am bound to say that the term i Xature ' covers the 
totality of that which is. The world of psychical phenomena 
appears to me as much a part of e Xature ? as the world of 

i Professor Huxley, in his " Science and Christian Tradition 
Essays," p. 3Sf. 



264 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

physical phenomena; and I am unable to perceive any justifi- 
cation for cutting the Universe into two halves, one natural 
and one super-natural." But such a statement as this, however 
it may seem to be an adequate refutation of certain theological 
views, neither expresses correctly nor suggests happily the an- 
swer to the problem of metaphysics as a theory of reality. 
Real spiritual beings exist (that "psychical phenomena" 
occur is an inadequate way of stating the data of the prob- 
lem) ; these beings develope within the sphere for which the 
collective term Nature is proposed as a principle of ex- 
planation. Immediately the problem becomes not one of sep- 
arating this sphere into two, as it were, independent halves; 
but of comprehending it in its totality so that it can seem 
to be a principle capable of performing all the work of 
creation and development attributed to it. And just as 
the lower conception of a matter, that seemed unable to 
live, and to be conscious, and to be mindful of itself, was 
transcended; so now it is necessary to transcend the con- 
ception of an unspiritual nature. For unless nature is con- 
ceived of as having the additional characteristics of spiritual 
being, it is as inadequate as the conception of matter was found 
to be, to serve as the one collective term for all that is real. 

Let us, then, for the moment be content to say: Spirit 
must be immanent in Nature. To get from Nature to Spirit, 
it is necessary only to get more deeply into Nature. In other 
words, the needed principle is not to be found either in an un- 
spiritual nature — falsely called, "scientific"; nor in the sep- 
aration of the One Universe into the two halves of nature 
and spirit; but in recognizing the truth that Spirit is the real 
and essential Being of so-called Nature. In this truth both 
science and philosophy may agree. 

The ultimate problem of metaphysics has now made a cer- 
tain advance toward solution; but it has reached its most acute 
and difficult stage. The very essence of finite spirit is to be 
actually self-conscious and consciously self-determining. And 



MATTER AND MIND: NATURE AND SPIRIT 265 

these spiritualnexercises and achievements are possible only if 
the conclusion be accepted that they are immanent, or poten- 
tial, in the Nature from which, and in which, all spirits have 
their being and their development. But how can such Spirit 
be actually immanent, as an effective principle, without being 
actually and actively exercised? In a word, how can Spirit, 
as a collective term be employed with reference to the work 
of Nature, unless the same Nature be understood to be essen- 
tially self-conscious and self -determining Spirit? To the ques- 
tion in this form only two answers are possible. Either we 
must say that the use of the word Spirit as a collective term is 
a mere abstraction, a carrying of the process of personification 
beyond the limit within which there can be any corresponding 
Reality; or else, we must accept the term in good faith, and 
regard it as setting the limit to all metaphysical conclusions. 
In the former case, all the work of human knowledge, whether 
ordinary, scientific, or philosophical, seems to have carried 
the race along lines of an experience with self-like things and 
an acquaintance with the inmost reality of humanity, only to 
end in agnosticism and stupefaction. In the latter case, the 
mind is brought face to face with the ultimate mystery of 
existence in the rational conviction, and reasoned conclusion, 
that the Being of the World is indeed self-conscious and self- 
determining Spirit; since it is truly apprehended by man after 
the analogy of his own self-conscious and self-determining 
spirit. 

No sane thinker would claim that the use of this collective 
term, and the conception which corresponds to it, — the con- 
ception of Absolute Spirit — can be comprehended on all sides. 
On the contrary, it is itself the conception in whieh the ultimate 
mysteries of all being and of all human knowledge are included. 
As a principle of explanation it cannot, therefore, be made 
to take the place, or usurp the functions, of any — much less 
of all of the particular sciences. That it needs to be, and that 
it may be, successfully supported and expanded in a manner 



266 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

helpful to thought, and comforting to the feelings, by consid- 
erations of fact and argument taken from other branches of 
philosophy, we shall show later on. But neither religious faith, 
nor cool, reflective thinking, can solve all mysteries. The 
particular sciences are even more impotent in the same spheres 
of explanatory endeavor. Indeed, their principal contributions 
to such problems only increase the difficulties and the com- 
plications attending any attempt at their solution. But this 
is because the more man knows of particular realities, the 
richer and more complex does the World which contains and 
produces them all, of necessity appear. 

There is, however, one objection to any such theory of real- 
ity as that to which we have been, step by step, led forward, 
that requires a brief notice at this point. It has often been 
urged — although not so much of late — that the very conception 
of an Absolute Spirit, of the Being of the World as essentially 
self-conscious and self-determining, is internally contradictory 
and intrinsically absurd. Against this unqualified negation 
one might oppose the equally unqualified affirmation of Lotze: 
that only the Absolute or Infinite can be a self-conscious and 
self-determining Spirit, a real Person, in the truest meaning 
of the term. The more modest answer of psychology would 
seem to lie between, and to depend with much better assurance 
upon the valid experience of what it is really to be a Mind. 
The grasp of man's self-consciousness, and the sphere of man's 
self-determination, are in fact limited in space and time and 
content, in many ways. Nor can his mind imagine, or render 
into actual terms of consciousness, what a life would be like, 
in which all such limitations were wholly removed. But it does 
not appear that limitations, external to the Self and im- 
posed from without, are essential to either self-consciousness 
or self-determination. On the contrary, the more varied, con- 
tentful, and rapid, are our activities which are classed under 
the terms, " sense-perception " or " self-consciousness," the more 
of minds, or spirits, do we seem to ourselves really to be. And 



MATTER AND MIND: NATURE AND SPIRIT 267 

to hold that^Absolute Spirit cannot be, because all its seem- 
ing self-determinations must really spring from its own depths 
instead of being actualized as limitations from without, would 
seem to merit the very charge of absurdity which the argu- 
ment itself is constructed in order to enforce. We are at 
present contented, therefore, to affirm that the conception of 
the Being of the World, as Absolute Spirit, or self-conscious 
and self-determining Mind, is not to be thrown out of court, 
as contrary to reason, because it is not clearly representable 
in human imagination, or mathematically demonstrable, or 
capable of being subjected to the tests of empirical science. 
[For it is a conception, the argument for which seems to har- 
monize with the nature of all human knowledge, and with the 
essential characteristics of all the objects of such knowledge. 
Were particular things, not of mind, how could they become 
known as actively they are known, to minds? And were the 
Nature in which all spiritual natures live and move and have 
their being, not as good as Personal Spirit; how could these 
finite spirits explain the fact that they themselves are consti- 
tuted and developed, as they know themselves really to be? 



CHAPTER XIII 

ETHICS, OR MORAL PHILOSOPHY: ITS SPHERE AND 
PROBLEMS 

It is impossible to tell what human history would have been 
without the commanding influence of human moral, artistic, 
and religious ideals. It is safe to say that there would have 
been no human history at all. Indeed, it is these sentiments 
and ideals, rather than those ordinarily grouped under the 
physical and economic forces, which have chiefly characterized 
and controlled man's historical development; and to them the 
physical movements, whether peaceful or warlike, and the 
economical failures and successes of humanity, have been largely 
due. It is almost equally impossible to conjecture how the 
world of things would appear, and what would be the course 
in evolution of the physical and chemical sciences, if man were 
not possessed somehow of a moral, sesthetical, and religious 
nature. The World has never seemed to him devoid of mys- 
terious and admirable forces, under the guidance of ideas 
which he could only dimly apprehend or, perhaps, could not 
even venture guesses about; but which stirred feeling, and 
stimulated ideas, of the beautiful and the sublime. The re- 
ligious feelings of awe, worship, and desire for a knowledge 
which may safely lead to communion with invisible spirits, 
have universally been attached to the conception of Nature, as 
well as to many of the particular natural objects which seemed 
especially adapted to call them forth. Even modern science 
cannot talk of the grandeur, orderliness, mysterious power, and 
architectonic skill, of the things it observes and measures, or — 
even less — of the Universe, of which these things are parts and 
in whose life they share, without appealing to the same senti- 



ETHICS, OR MORAL PHILOSOPHY 269 

ments and ideals. In a word, things — their natures, modes of 
behavior, relations under the laws in a system — are scientifi- 
cally known to he real, in such a way as evokes the confidence 
that, to some extent at least, they correspond to human ideals 
of an ethico-sesthetical or ethico-religious sort. 

If now we recur to the point where the attempt was made 
to distinguish the main divisions of philosophy (see p. 30) it 
appears that one of these divisions was called " Philosophy 
of the Real," and another " Philosophy of the Ideal." We 
turn now to the more definite consideration of those problems 
which appropriately belong under the latter term. 

Of the problems which may somewhat readily be distinguished 
as belonging to the Philosophy of the Ideal, there are three 
principal kinds. These give us the three divisions of (1) Ethics, 
or Moral Philosophy, (2) ^Esthetics, and (3) the Philosophy of 
Religion. Only in the latter case, however, do we find that 
the reflective thinking of mankind has evolved an Ideal of 
such a character that, its reality being assumed or proved, 
philosophy finds in it the ultimate Ground of all that is real, 
and the realization of all human ideals. Since this Idea is 
believed in, and worshipped, as God, the problem which it 
offers to reflective thinking may be called the problem of u The 
Absolute," or of the " Ideal-Real." 

Our first concern in dealing with Ethics as a branch of 
philosophy is to know what territory it proposes to cover; and 
how it proposes to deal with the problems which it claims lie 
within this territory. And here at once some difficulty arises 
from the very nature of the subject. On the one hand, philos- 
ophy is supposed to deal with matters of theory — such as a 
theory of knowledge, or a theory of reality; and to make use 
of the methods of reflection and speculation. Only in this way, 
and then only as a matter of degrees, does it distinguish itself 
from the particular sciences which, as there has been repeated 
occasion to see, are all to a degree, metaphysical. But ethics 
— first, last and all the time — deals with what is practical, or 



2T0 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AXD REALITY 

with doing in the form of human conduct. Only as thoughts, 
feelings, and ideas, are forms of doing, or matters of a practical 
sort, do thev come within the sphere of ethics at all. Even the 
most abstract speculations of the schools of ethics, when ex- 
amined, turn out to be for the most part wranglings over ques- 
tions of psychological fact, rather than different essays in 
guarded and thorough reflective thinking. The tendency has, 
therefore, been on the one hand to exclude ethical problems from 
science because they deal so much with uncertain data of indi- 
vidual opinions and do not admit of scientific tests ; and, on the 
other hand, to discredit moral philosophy as too abstract for 
paying so little attention to the same data, as matters of 
fact. 

If the word " science * is to be confined to physical and 
chemical investigations, where mathematics and measurements 
and careful use of the external senses are so important, ethics 
certainly cannot be classed as one of the sciences. But the data 
for this study are data of fact; and ethics is pre-eminently a 
study of facts, if one may agree with Professor Wundt in say- 
ing : " The estimate of the value of facts is also itself a fact, 
and a fact which must not be overlooked when it is there to see." 
Ethics is also pre-eminently a psychological science; and it 
therefore requires the appreciation and interpretation of facts 
of the mental life, " as such " — that is, as facts of conscious, 
and self-conscious and self-determining mind. For this reason, 
to endeavor to convert it into an anthropological or sociological 
study, and so absorb it in the sciences which complicate and 
spread themselves under these terms, is quite to reverse the true 
order of procedure. For anthropology itself, and even to a 
greater extent, so-called sociology, have no claim to scientific 
standing except as they are compounds of psychology, ethics, 
and certain branches of history. The external signs of these 
forms of man's ethical evolution are discoverable by observation 
and history; the appreciation and interpretation of them must 
be given by psychology and ethics. 



ETHICS,. OR MORAL PHILOSOPHY ~ 1 

~ e.eee ee:~ eiee :/resri:n is nisei. " VTLa: rarriieeelar n: :e 
neeneel fares, inizeeeenr ieies -ieiile ire eseeeneees ee eiee T-aleee 
:: errs, ires eeinis ereeznee e: reinee e: szeneeri: ieren; " :'ir 
ans~er is n:e esreriellT iiereeene. Tiee - ere ieees :f ieerrran ren- 
in:: lenine: eerresses iesele. inieei. in s rreae Tirie~ :i 
eererrral ~S7=. n:h es resrrrre.. lenrrrre. rr:~eenenes :: ±e 
bodily organism, customs, institutions, la— =. reierr es :':seeT- 
:e:e ; . :_1 e~en seieneeri:- eni zizii : ~ : eiii : ei rieeeries. 3ree 
eieese ere all sirrrs :: eiee eeezeer iiie ei iiees. rnenrirrs. nc rives. 
me leers :f — "... : :z:_ ie is eiiis irenee iiie. rrlnrarilT :;ns:i- 
erei. -ir::ie i: ; Tree eeieiral riOLzj. 

T~: irnrireen: ine_z:ei:ns iie ~leiein :iee srirere. s: fa: is ir 
ie = eireeij eeen iernei. :f rieer reeeeie: iezei er_i syseerrarl: 
study of certain facts oi eiee irener life w in in may be Balled 
in e rzelireeere :; ":e nee s:ien:e :i eeieies. Tiee fersr :: eieese 
is eiee iisrirrerrn lee~een ie::s -ieiiir ere eeieen es reeee leers. 
:e_i ei. ; e frees ~_i;T ere eseeeneees :f eiee -eiee :: ie::s: i: is 
iee eiris irerer :lrss :: := ::s Tie: eiee -e:j essenee :: eiee e:ie::ei is 
e: ee e:r.eri. ir 7 :i_:i : r~ ree~ i::ie ee eii eeeze.i i ? : e s . en 
: ; e_eee ie:es. in eiee sarre — 17 in — iei:ie eiee :zerri:el anr rinsi- 

i s:ienees line e: ieei ~rie eiee ie::s ieiiinr ~ ieieen eieeie rr- 
sreirTre srieeres. T r: eein:s :enn:e rereel ies ::- :es s.leTr in 
eieis fasrrrn. Tiee en:enene ~:r eeiee eiee ee.ee:ei ~;in: :i vie—. 
7:n nense renin e: srerir ee " r: : i " eni " lei ** — rrerzerr *:y 
nieis e: see rr s:nee sernieri :i -nine, e: eiee rreasnrerrene :f 
vriiiii: eiee fries en ~:nr ;nirenene. nense ::ene. Ani ie: ee be 
nirieei eiee: eeieis semeiari :enn:: ie eiee reverie. :e eereneiiej. 
e eiee fens eieerese>es. Tree is e: se~. eiee : neereeeee; :: eiee 
inner life. ~ieeeieer ien: - n I7 seii-::ee ; n: :. s n e s s :e I7 eree: 
sims. eee ie;neeee e: e.e _ e s:ene nene :f — :een. :r ~:~n_e; ; - 
ness ? according as they do, or do not, conform, to some kind of 
eeiern Tieej eee ee :es :: Tileee. irene eiee eein:ei rein: :f 
"ree - . 

Tie seeeni iisrin:ri:n - iei:ie is reneieei in ::iee eiee eeeeer 
:: eenne eie sjieeee :f e:in:s is eiee ieseen:n:n lee~een e:n:n 



272 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

and conduct. 1 " It is not mere doing, whether of this or that 
sort, which gives to the student of ethics his peculiar problems. 
Conduct implies something more than action. Conduct implies 
the consciousness of an end that may be striven for; it implies 
the knowledge of means that are adapted to the end ; it implies 
the power of choice with reference to both end and means. 
Conduct, in a word, is action rationally shaped; it is the doing 
of a Moral Self." This, however, does not narrow the sphere 
of ethics. We recall how Aristotle, in his attempt to define 
ethics as a kind of politics, affirms of the total function of man 
that it is " an activity of soul in accordance with reason, or not 
independently of reason" (Nic. Eth., I, vii, 14). Conduct, as 
being the action of a Moral Self, is not indeed a specific kind 
of action, set apart, as it were, for some definite species of 
external performances, certain compliances with custom, or re- 
fusals to comply, to the exclusion of other species of action. 
" In fact, the presence of these ethical estimates is to be dis- 
cerned in every thing which man consciously and voluntarily 
does. Higher or lower degrees of these characteristics of all 
conduct are actually found as far back in history, and as low 
down in ethical or intellectual degradation, as we can follow 
the development of humanity. In his eating the adult human 
being, unless converted by hunger, or lost to shame, he returns 
to the action of a beast, does not merely feed. In his drinking 
he does not simply swill his drink. He raises the social cup, 
he pours out a libation to the gods; and the gods at any rate 
must be treated politely by the most shameless and glutton- 
ous of cannibals. And when, as amongst the various Hindu 
castes in India, custom and morality and religion are so con- 
fused as to constitute a nearly complete enslavement of all the 
activities and interests of human life, the necessity and validity 
of this distinction between action and conduct are all the 
more to be emphasized." 

iSee the author's Philosophy of Conduct, p. 10 f., from which 
the following quotations are taken. 



ETHICS, OR MORAL PHILOSOPHY 273 

From these considerations are derived in part, but in part 
only, the reasons for emphasizing the presence of ideals in all 
ethical study. Certain proximate, but not final, ideals are of 
necessity involved in the very facts which have been called 
" estimates of the values of facts " ; and which therefore comply 
with the characteristics distinguishing mere action from true 
conduct. In one form or another most writers on ethical sub- 
jects acknowledge the presence and power of these ideal influ- 
ences. It is this recognition which has led some of them 
(Wundt) to define ethics as "the original science of norms' 7 ; 
and which has induced yet others (Mr. Spencer) to speak of 
ethics as dealing with the " doubly ideal." By the latter term 
it is meant that ethics should consider what would be " ideal 
conduct" (or conduct conforming to the idea which sets the 
standard) under " ideally constituted social conditions." But 
with this we cannot agree. 

If now the data of ethics be approached with a view to collate 
and interpret them, and so to reduce them to something, at least 
resembling scientific form, the approach may be made from 
any one of several points of view. Inasmuch as these 
data are facts of different kinds of human conduct, rather 
than of the actions of the lower animals or of an- 
gelic beings under other than human physical and social con- 
ditions, they must be regarded as springing from the nature of 
man. The sources of ethics are to be found in the Self, re- 
garded as self-conscious and self-determining; but also as in- 
fluenced and determined by its relations to other selves and to 
self-like things. When studied from this point of view, ethics 
becomes a pre-eminently psychological investigation. But the 
same data may be classified as historical occurrences; and then 
it soon becomes apparent that this classification, in order to 
correspond to historical truth, must recognize the principle of 
development. By no means precisely the same kinds of con- 
duct have been estimated in the same way by all human beings 
at any one time, or under all conditions, or in the different 



274 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ages of human history. Whether the ethical data are studied, 
as they are furnished by the individual, or by any particular 
group of individuals, or — so far as this is possible — by the 
race at large, ceaseless changes are seen to be taking place. 
Some deeds which were rated as virtues become rated as vices; 
and the vices of previous generations gain toleration, or even 
secure the approval as virtues, of succeeding generations. A 
deeper insight does, indeed, convince the student that these 
changes affect more the external signs than the character of the 
motives, the sentiments and ideals, from which the actions are 
judged to spring. But this conclusion, too, must be reached in 
accordance with the verdict of history. 

In man's moral development, whether as individual or as 
racial, the same general truths prevail which characterize every 
form of human development. It is only by observation and re- 
flection that the Moral Self comes to understand itself as moral 
or to discover the principles which underlie and regulate the 
relations in the midst of which its life and its developments 
take place. Eight moral practice, understood as an intelligent 
and deliberate conformity to principles which appear reasonable 
to the conscious mind, is a relatively late affair. The more 
nearly instinctive and spontaneous following of obscure im- 
pulses, the acceptance of judgments either pronounced by recog- 
nized authorities or embodied in customs and institutions, belong 
to the earlier stages of ethical development. Beyond these 
stages, even after centuries of discussion of ethical problems 
by the advocates of the different schools of ethics, multitudes of 
men never attain. But in ethics, as in physics and in the 
natural sciences generally, certain principles do become, not 
only more clear as embodied in customs and institutions, and 
as taught by the recognized authorities; but they become more 
clearly comprehended as respects their nature and their grounds. 
Thus something of a logical character, something resembling a 
scientific system, is in a measure made possible for the student 
of ethics. In a word, the psychological study of the data in 



ETHICS, OR MORAL PHILOSOPHY 275 

their sources, and the historical study of the same data in their 
evolution, helped out by reasoning, result in a so-called " sci- 
ence of ethics." 

Whether we consent to call this result from studying the 
facts of human conduct a " science," or not, we certainly can- 
not call it a science of ethics, the moment we lose sight of those 
distinctions in the making of which the peculiar sphere of the 
moral, as contrasted with the non-moral, is to be defined. The 
data of ethics are never less than the doings of a self-conscious 
and self -determining mind. It is true that all conduct, like all 
the existence of man and all that happens to man, is insep- 
arably related to the bodily organism, both in the manner of 
its origin and also in the character of its expression. Of what 
would be conduct, good or bad, for a wholly disembodied spirit, 
no satisfactory mental representation can be framed. It is also 
true that the earlier and vaguer notions of personal life at- 
tribute to the Self many things which do not fall under the 
category of conduct as we have already defined it. Primitive 
and savage peoples often emphasize by punishment or reward 
a kind of unconscious and unintentional tribal responsibility. 
And theology has, in all the greater religions, consigned un- 
born or newly born infants, to perdition for the conscious 
vices of remote and even mythical ancestors. But if any ap- 
propriate sphere for a scientific ethics is to be discovered, it 
must recognize the difference between action and conduct as 
already defined. 

Whether in treating of the sources, the doctrine of evolution, 
or the logical conclusions by way of establishing principles of 
ethics, another distinction is equally important. This dis- 
tinction arises out of a difference in the " facts of estimate " 
given to the facts of conduct. If there were no such facts of 
estimate, and no such classification as is signified by the words 
" approved " or " disapproved," " right " or " wrong," " good " 
or " bad," " ought " and " ought-not " ; then there would be no 
strictly ethical data to consider. Indeed, it is the attachment 



276 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

of the facts of estimate to the facts of conduct which converts 
them into affairs of moral concernment. This second distinc- 
tion directs the thought to a doctrine of sanctions as an indis- 
pensable part of moral philosophy. 

This preliminary conception of the sphere of ethics may be 
completed by summarizing the preceding thoughts as follows: 
" Ethics results from the scientific study of human conduct — 
its sources, its development, its most general principles and its 
sanctions — as related to a standard." Its subject-matter is 
Conduct; its problems are such as the following: How do the 
different facts of estimate arise as having their sources in hu- 
man nature? What kind of development do these forms of 
conduct go through, in the history of the individual and of the 
Tace? What principles may, with more or less consistency, be 
derived as governing this development? What is the origin, 
nature, and validity of these sanctions? And what is the 
nature of the standard to which the different kinds of con- 
duct are brought, for the purpose of determining their 
worth ? 

It will appear at once that it is no easy task to tell just 
where philosophy must enter the field, and how far go hand in 
hand with science, in the discussion of ethical data. There is, 
indeed, no important ethical problem which does not very 
quickly transform itself into such a shape that its solution be- 
comes largely a matter for metaphysical inquiry. Indeed, when 
examined to their foundations, they are all found to be firmly 
cemented to metaphysical problems. The one profoundly in- 
teresting question which reflective thinking puts to them all is 
with regard to their grounds in the real Being of the World. 
Facts, they are, and opinions about facts. They are facts 
which at first seem of the most mystical and changeful char- 
acter; they are opinions that often appear most whimsical to 
the mind of a later age, and often most unaccountable even to 
the mind of the person entertaining them. Yet there is about 
these ethical data a certain group of characteristics which led 



ETHICS, OR MORAL PHILOSOPHY 277 

the Greek tragedian to speak of the " firmer laws " of right 
and wrong conduct as, 

" Created not of man's ephemeral mould, 
They ne'er shall sink to slumber in oblivion, 
A power of God is there, untouched by Time." 

And Aristotle, although he seems clearly to have recognized 
the difficulty of establishing ethics as a science, affirms : " There 
is no human function so constant as the activities in accordance 
with virtue; they seem to be more permanent than the sciences 
themselves." 

The following three questions, however, summarize fairly 
well the main problems which the data of ethics propose to 
reflective thinking in the form of moral philosophy: (1) What 
is the real nature of that being in whom the sources of mor- 
ality are found? (2) What are the kinds of his conduct that 
have actually established themselves as conformable to the 
standard set by this nature in its actual relations to its environ- 
ment? (3) What ground in the Being of the World can be 
assumed for the sanctions and the ideals of morality? In 
brief, the philosophy of conduct treats of the Moral Self, the 
Virtuous Life, and the Nature of the Right or morally Good; 
— and all with a view to fit its conclusions into a harmonious 
system of reflective thinking. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE MORAL SELF 

The principal problem of psychological ethics may be 
summed up in some such manner as follows: What equipment 
for the moral life belongs to the subject of that life? In at- 
tempting to answer this problem that study of the phenomena 
which takes the point of view of biological evolution and there- 
fore tries, under the principle of continuity, to make both a 
historical and a causal connection between man and the lower 
animals, is not without great value. But from the distinctively 
ethical point of view, man's moral nature must be regarded as 
an endowment. Whatever order his moral evolution may have 
followed; and however the influences of environment acted in 
establishing this order; ethics is chiefly concerned to know that 
it is, and what it is, which now renders man capable of respon- 
sible conduct. Even in raising such an inquiry, it is found 
necessary to distinguish between those factors, or forms of 
functioning, which are essentially ethical, and those which, 
however important as springs and guides of conduct, are not 
essential in order to a capacity for conduct at all. For exam- 
ple, anger, jealousy, fear, pride, and sympathy, together with 
the actions which grow out of them, are common to man with 
the lower animals. In man's case these emotions become dis- 
tinguished as either good or bad from the ethical point of view. 
In man's case, too, they have an important influence in deter- 
mining moral character. But they are not in themselves spe- 
cific factors of man's moral equipment; they need to be associ- 
ated with some other characteristics of feeling, judgment, and 
volition, in order to give them the uniquely moral significance 
which they have in the case of the human animal. 

What, then, is it really to be a Moral Self ? And what is the 

278 



THE MORAL SELF 279 

significance of such a being in its influence upon our views 
as to the nature of the world which has evolved him? If we 
can answer these questions with any degree of fullness and con- 
fidence, we may hope — at least in some measure — to expand 
and confirm a tenable theory of reality. Thus the metaphysics 
of ethics may be made contributory to general metaphysics. 
Really to be a Self is, indeed, to be a self-conscious, rational, 
and self-determining Mind. But to be such a mind, would not, 
of itself, be the equivalent of a real Moral Selfhood. What 
more is necessary in order to constitute such a reality? Nature 
has answered this most primary demand by endowing man with 
a unique form of feeling. 1 

"Into every genuinely human consciousness, into every sub- 
ject of the truly human life, there enters at some time a form 
of emotional disturbance which is chronologically primary and 
essential to the very idea of ethics, as well as the unique pos- 
session of man. It is only when this feeling becomes attached 
to the idea of a certain action, that the action becomes conduct 
and the truly moral life begins. This statement must be re- 
ceived as applying in the strictest way to the development of 
moral consciousness in the individual; but it may be taken on 
grounds which, although largely speculative, are quite tenable, 
as applying to the development of morality in the race. It 
follows from the very nature of this feeling, as well as from 
the circumstances of its first origin in human consciousness, 
that all analysis ends with its recognition; neither the memory 
of the individual, nor any records kept by mankind, can recall 
and represent the occasions or the conditions of its origin in 
the race. As in similar cases, however, it is possible in this case 
to place on a firm basis of observed facts our views as to what 
takes place in the development of the individual, and to make 
out an acceptable argument as to what must have taken place 

iFor a detailed discussion of the "Feeling of Obligation," see 
Chapter V of the author's Philosophy of Conduct, from which the 
quotations are made. 



280 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

in the history of the race." This feeling, which in its compli- 
cated and more highly developed form is known as the " feeling 
of obligation," we will call in its simpler and original form the 
"feeling of the ought" (and its opposite, the feeling of the 
ought-not). About it our contention is this: "The feeling of 
the ought " is primary, essential, unique; but the judgments as 
to what one ought are the result of environment, education, and 
reflection. 

Within the consciousness of the human individual this feel- 
ing of the ought must arise and develope, or there can be no 
beginning and no growth of the Moral Self. The actuality in 
fact, and the dominating influence of this feeling, constitute 
the self-conscious and self-determining mind to be an ethical 
spirit. Its nature, which is essential to human moral nature, 
demands such a description as experience is able to give to it; 
but its nature is essentially such as to make its positive charac- 
teristics known only by the experience of just it and no other 
form of emotion or ideation. And, first, the feeling of the 
ought is not a mere pleasure-pain feeling; although it may be 
fused, or more loosely associated, with various kinds of pleasur- 
able or painful feelings. Second: it is not a special form of 
emotion or desire, to be classed with the appetites, passions, 
or affections, such as hunger, or anger, fear, jealousy, love, or 
hate. But it is, third, a social feeling and apparently demands 
for its origin even, as it certainly demands for its guidance and 
development, the encitement of personal instruction and the 
experience of personal relations. It is also, fourth, a peculiar 
form of compulsion. To feel " I ought " is to become aware 
of some sort of bond which draws toward, or away from, some 
particular deed or course of conduct. But it would appear that 
in most, if not in all, of its earlier forms of manifestation, the 
reason Why — the explanation of the cause of the compulsion — 
is not made clear to the subject of this feeling. It is this mys- 
tery about the whole matter, this failure to comprehend why the 
mind feels compelled to do or not to do, with its accompani- 



THE MORAL SELF 281 

ment of sanctions which are obscure and hard to reckon with, 
that has bestowed its power upon tabu among primitive and 
savage peoples: and that has also induced religious minds to 
regard conscience as the u voice of God."' To this must be 
added that the more sensitive the mind becomes to this kind of 
compulsion, the less regardful it becomes of the other forms 
of physical or psychical compulsion which endeavor to control 
conduct by an appeal to its sensitiveness to various kinds of 
pleasures and pains. 

It is true that " when adult men say, c I ought/ or other 
words equivalent to these, they are customarily expressing a 
complex attitude of mind toward a particular piece of conduct. 
Like every other attitude of mind, that which is thus expressed 
involves feeling, thought, and volition. And, indeed, one may 
emphasize either of these three aspects of the total situation by 
modifying one's expression. Thus one may emphasize the emo- 
tional factor by declaring: 'I feel ' (more or less intensely and 
unswervingly) that I ought; or may lay stress upon the intel- 
lectual factor, the presence of judgment, by saying: 'I think* 
(more or less clearly, and with a consciousness of the reasons 
or grounds) that I ought: or even: e I must/ indeed, and I 
shall, because I ought — in this way bringing into evidence the 
volitional impulse or mandate given to the will. But by sep- 
arating in thought, what cannot be found wholly apart in the 
actual life of the Self, the conclusion is justified that this feel- 
ing of the ought is not to be identified with any other forms of 
human consciousness. " 

It is not difficult now to see how a great variety arises, not 
only in the actual forms of conduct which become accepted as 
customs, but also in those facts of estimate which by their at- 
tachment to the facts of action bring them within the sphere 
of the truly moral. For this obscure and mysterious " feeling 
of oughtness n is at first chiefly subject to conditions set by the 
physical and social environment. More precisely, at the first, 
it is chiefly prohibitory, — an enforcement by authority or by 



282 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

the immediate connection with painful consequences, of the 
feeling I ought-no t. Especially amongst savage and more 
nearly primitive peoples is it true that the feeling of obligation 
is primarily enforced, in the supposed interests of the family 
or tribe, so as to connect itself with refraining from doing 
something which the passions or self-interested promptings of 
the individual would lead him to do. " You must not this ; 
you must not that," — such is the command with which the com- 
munity meets the cry of its individual members : " I want this, 
or I want that." Almost equally original and imperative is the 
demand to do that which it is painful or disagreeable to do. 
Thus customs, whether they are viewed as good or bad morally 
from the later historical, or higher and purer ethical points of 
view, become the approved laws for the Moral Self. That en- 
vironment — and chiefly in the social form constituted by 
the prevalent customs — largely has the say as to what connec- 
tions shall in fact be established between certain forms and 
types of conduct and this unique feeling of obligation, there 
can be no doubt. But this is a very different thing from saying 
that the customary is the moral ; or that the development of the 
Moral Self is purely a matter determined by the physical and 
social environment. 

Moreover, a process of reflection which has for its object to 
consider both the remoter consequences of conduct, and also 
the intrinsic nature of the inner life of thought, sentiment, 
and deeds of will, as itself subject to estimates of value from 
an ideal point of view, is all the while going on in the individual 
and in the race. Moral judgment, carrying with it the com- 
pulsion of the feeling of obligation, is constantly being passed 
upon the established customs themselves. Thus the Moral 
Self rises above the very influences which have co-operated to 
make it a Moral Self at the first. It was shaped by custom; 
but it now " breaks the cake of custom " and appeals in justi- 
fication to something of a higher value which it finds within 
itself. 



THE MORAL SELF 283 

" The further exposition of the part which the feeling of obli- 
gation plays in the moral development of man requires that the 
working of other faculties in his equipment for the life of con- 
duct should be taken into account. In part the origin, nature, 
and cultivation of ethical judgments must be discussed before 
we can understand the later forms of his consciousness of 
' oughtness.' But two or three classes of familiar phenomena 
deserve at least a reference in this connection. First, it may 
readily be seen that vacillations and uncertainties of this form 
of ethical feeling are inevitable. These are not simply due to 
its obscuration and blunting by the so-called selfish emotions. 
Doubt about the rightfulness of the control of the feeling of ob- 
ligation by the current rules of conduct is essential to a higher 
development of the individual and of the race. But such doubt 
inevitably leads to the disturbance of the feeling and to its 
possible detachment from its old associations. While this feel- 
ing trembles in the balance, as it were, between the old and the 
new point of attachment, an important influence is being ex- 
ercised upon the entire attitude of the individual toward the 
conception of duty and toward the dutiful life. In large com- 
munities, and over continents occupied by different races and 
differing constitutions of existing society, periods of c illumina- 
tion ' are always connected with unusual disturbances in morals 
and in the moral consciousness. This was true of the epoch 
when the Sophists became prominent in Greece, of the Renais- 
sance in the Middle Ages, of the Aufkldrung in Europe in the 
eighteenth century; it is true of to-day in connection with the 
modern discoveries of ethnology and with the application of the 
cruder views of biological evolution to the development of mor- 
ality in the human race. 

"And, second, the place of the feeling of obligation in the 
moral life explains, in part, how divergent views as to the 
nature and authority of so-called f conscience ' may arise. To 
speak of a conscience, or the conscience, is likely to induce 
misunderstanding of the most primary data of psychological 



284 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ethics. Moral consciousness man has; or, rather, he is essen- 
tially a moral consciousness. In this moral nature of his con- 
sciousness are found involved all of his so-called faculties, or 
powers, in so far as they have reference to the production and 
the criticism of conduct. No wonder, then, that those theorists 
who appeal solely to the feeling of obligation fail to convince 
others who take their appeal to the bar of an enlightened judg- 
ment. And just as little wonder that the latter, when they 
offend the feeling of obligation by their coolly intellectual judg- 
ments, run the risk of being described as essentially immoral in 
their standards of judgment. Thus fine feeling and sound 
judgment in matters of conduct may seem to be involved in a 
perpetual conflict. 

" But, third, these same considerations show that this kind of 
conflicts in morals, with all the tragedy to which these words 
indubitably bear witness, is the fate of the individual and of 
the race, — the price that must be paid for all essential progress 
under existing social conditions toward the realization of the 
moral ideal. If moral judgment, based on grounds that lie 
outside itself and beyond the reach of mere feeling, is ever to 
be framed, then feeling and judgment must at times come into 
conflict. But since the rational man feels the obligation to be 
rational, — and, sometimes, as his supremest obligation, — there- 
fore, the feeling of obligation is liable to be divided against 
itself. He who has not judged that he ought not to do that 
which he, nevertheless, still feels that he ought to do, has prob- 
ably not yet passed beyond the earliest stages of moral develop- 
ment. 

" And, finally, we are now prepared in a general way to give 
an opinion upon one of the contentions of the extreme evolu- 
tionary school of ethics. This school would make out that all 
which concerns the feeling of obligation is relative, is subject 
to evolution. In the case of individual man such a conclusion 
plainly is not true to the facts in the case. With the individual 
the most primary movings of an c ought-consciousness ' are not 



THE MORAL SELF 285 

modifications of the pleasure-pain feelings, or of any of those 
forms of emotional excitement which are so often improperly 
divided into egoistic and altruistic. On the other hand, the 
most primary forms of the quasi-ethical judgments are only 
propositions stating the fact of the arousement of this feeling; 
and the particular actions to which this feeling makes its earli- 
est and firmest attachments are explicable by reference to influ- 
ences of education and environment. In the later development 
of the Moral Self, the feeling of obligation becomes modified 
and changed in its associations by the changed character of the 
same influences, as these influences work upon all the passions 
and affections, and upon a system of increasingly intelligent 
judgments. 

" Thus do man's moral convictions form themselves ; and they 
always present the twofold aspect in which the feeling of obli- 
gation stands to his voluntary nature. They have a passive 
aspect; they are a consciousness of being under law. They have 
also an active aspect; they are an emotional excitement which 
constitutes a call to volition. The feeling of obligation is a 
feeling of being bound ; for the ' ought ' partakes in a measure 
of the nature of a c must ' : it is also an impulsive feeling, and 
in its more intense forms comes very near to passing over from 
emotional impulse into an ( I will.' 

" What is true in the small sphere is probably true in the 
large. What is true of the ought-consciousness of the individual 
is, so far as we can discover, true of the place which the feeling 
of obligation has always taken in the development of the moral 
life of the race." 

No increase in the intensity, or refinement in the quality, 
of the feeling of obligation could ever result in the development 
of a Moral Self. Here, as in all the functions and interests of 
a completed self-hood, or maturing personality, it is the active 
intellect which developes. For this, its work in the sphere of 
the moral life, however, it does not appear that any additional 
or peculiar forms of intellectual activity are necessary. What 



286 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

is necessary lies outside of the individual. It is his social en- 
vironment, and the instructive and disciplinary experiences 
which necessarily arise out of the varied relations and causal 
reactions which come to the individual by way of intercourse 
with those of his own kind. In a word, given a self-conscious 
and self-determining mind, with all the powers of memory, 
imagination, and rational inference as to the secret and more 
remote consequences of actions; endow such a mind with the 
feeling of obligation; and place it under such social conditions 
as actually exist for the race in its historical development here 
upon the earth ; and you then have supplied all that is necessary 
for the maturing of a Moral Self. 

The earliest judgments, which have only an inchoate or quasi- 
ethical character, are easily accounted for in the following way : 
Under external influences, the most potent of which consists 
of the immediate and dominant personal authority, the feeling 
of oughtness becomes attached to certain kinds of action, as a 
form of either positive or negative compulsion — a feeling of 
the " ought-to-be-done," or of the " ought-not-to-be-done." This 
feeling is aroused, intensified, and reinforced by certain pains or 
pleasures, which are inflicted by the same external authority. 
The parent, the nurse, the older brother or sister, the com- 
munity of playmates, or of teacher and school-mates, or the 
officer of the law in the block or upon the street-corner, estab- 
lishes for the individual child the connection in experience be- 
tween the germ of ethical emotion and the deed of will which 
results in the action. In its first stage, then, moral judgment 
is little. or nothing more than an affirmation of this connection. 
This is right, and that is wrong, means only that the feeling of 
oughtness in the one case, and of its opposite in the other case, 
is in fact established by certain social, but purely external in- 
fluences. But this important distinction between the moral 
judgment, even when in its most undeveloped form, and all 
judgments having relation to the connection of external events, 
is to be noted : The moral judgment establishes a connection of 



THE MORAL SELF 287 

an interior and unique sort between my feeling and my deed 
of will. And when this connection is reinforced by those other 
more complicated and distinctly social forms of ethical feeling 
which will be described later on, the evolution of moral self- 
hood is already well begun. 

The undeveloped state of the moral judgment cannot last, 
no matter however secluded the individual may be, or how 
narrow the limits of his social environment. Doubt must arise 
as to the validity and the value of such judgment; and read- 
justment of the factors which enter into it, whether it has 
taken the affirmative or the negative form, must inevitably take 
place. No individual is so fortunately born and so carefully edu- 
cated as to escape this shaking-up of his naive and unintelligent, 
but feeling-full moral judgments. No child of the slums, how- 
ever trained to judge himself bound in honor to commit crimes 
against the larger social order which encompasses and tries 
to restrain his own, can wholly avoid the challenge to reconsider 
his ideas and ideals of an ethical sort. 

The sources of this compulsion to form new and different 
judgments as to conduct are chiefly of two kinds. One kind 
arises from within. The very individuality of every Self brings 
about a conflict between the judgments which have been dic- 
tated from without in conformity to the social customs and 
social ideals, and the judgments which are required in order 
to afford satisfaction to the individual Self. I have been 
told, I have been made to feel, that I ought to do this, and that 
I ought not to do that. But I have my own Self to look after; 
and as this Self developes, the demands which it makes for vari- 
ous kinds and amounts of satisfactions are greatly increased. I 
want to do what I have been made to feel I ought not to do; 
and I want not to do what I have been made to feel I ought 
to do. According as these impulses to action, by way of appe- 
tite, passion, desire, ambition, aspiration, when judged by the 
standard of an enlightened moral ideal, are either lower or 
higher than the forms of conduct prescribed and enforced by the 



288 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

custom prevailing in his class, the individual may be deter- 
mined to fall or to rise in the moral scale. In the one case he 
violates conscience, as mere unreasoned feeling, by determin- 
ing to act contrary to his former moral judgments; and he 
may easily end by altering or suppressing the feeling, and by 
judging it to be morally right for him so to act. In the other 
case, he finds the satisfaction for what seems to him a higher 
form of feeling, by changing his former judgments in favor of 
these newer forms of experience. In either case, there has 
been an important development of the Moral Self. As we hear it 
properly said : " The man has come to judge and to act more 
for himself/' 

This inner temptation, or solicitation, to the development of 
moral selfhood by forming moral judgments of a more re- 
flective and self-determined character, is further enforced by a 
growing experience with the social environment. It does not 
take the child long to discover that other people hold a great 
variety of views as to the right and the wrong of particular 
kinds of conduct. Of course, in certain essentials there seems 
to be too nearly general an agreement to make it worth while to 
question its validity. Or, if this might possibly be questioned 
on theoretical grounds merely, — a kind of reflection for which 
the individual is scarcely prepared at the stage of his intel- 
lectual development which is here supposed; — it is surely not 
wise in practical ways to depart from the common moral judg- 
ment. But where there is so much difference on practical mat- 
ters as is obvious between parent and children, teacher and 
school-mate, officer of the law and thief, preacher and pew- 
holder, and between what one is on Sunday exhorted to do 
because it is right, and what one is tempted every week to 
judge is right, because it is wanted to be done; how shall the 
individual escape the necessity of revising and changing his 
moral judgments? 

The enforcement of the need of moral development through 
a revision of moral judgments is itself strengthened in two 



THE MORAL SELF 289 

important ways. The first of these consists in bringing to 
consciousness other forms of feeling which are essentially re- 
lated to, but are not identical with, the feeling of obligation. 
These are the feelings of approbation and of disapprobation, 
and the feelings of merit and demerit. These affective atti- 
tudes of the human consciousness toward conduct and toward 
character, when analyzed, appear more complex than the primi- 
tive and distinctively ethical feeling of obligation. From it 
they all differ in the following four, not unimportant ways. 

And, first, there is a difference in the ethical feelings as re- 
spects their temporal relations to the deed of will. In imagina- 
tion, at least, the feeling of obligation is fitly excited in view 
of a deed that is about to be done. This feeling looks forward 
to the future conduct; it arises on contemplation of conduct that 
is still to be. One of its most valuable services in assisting the 
growth of intelligent moral judgment is its power to call a 
halt to impulse before it passes over into deeds. " Hold up ! " 
it cries, "let us consider whether this is really what ought to 
be done." The question what ought to have been done is 
more purely speculative; it requires an act of imagination in 
order to place the Self in moral judgment before the deed. 
But with the feelings of approbation and disapprobation, just 
the reverse is true as respects the temporal relation to the deed. 
These feelings look backward upon the deed as an already ac- 
complished fact. They ask judgment to be pronounced in the 
light of the answer to the question : " How do you feel about 
it now ? " And this involves complicated calculations as to 
the consequences, especially as they affect one's position of 
credit or esteem in society ; and also one's feelings of self-esteem, 
or what we call moral shame or moral pride. From this, it 
follows, second, that the feeling of obligation constitutes a 
" motive " for the will — an impelling or deterrent force ; while 
the feelings of approbation and disapprobation are of a more 
contemplative, deliberative, and abstract character. In order 
to allow them to be attached to what men call a "cool judg- 



290 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ment," or a " fair estimate," of any piece of conduct, or type 
of character, it is necessary to have the intellect informed as 
to a great variety of the antecedent conditions, and more hidden 
constituents, of the object upon which judgment is to be passed. 

A third difference consists in the relations which the ethical 
feelings sustain to the experiences of pleasure and of pain. 
The feeling of obligation, when most intense and worthy of a 
high place in the scale of values, is often of a highly painful 
character. This is true of it whether it is found attached to a 
judgment which affirms the right, or to a judgment which 
affirms the wrong, of a particular piece of conduct. And while 
the pain occasioned by doing as one feels one ought may be very 
intense; the pleasure of doing as one ought is generally of a 
rather mild and non-compensatory value. It is as though nature 
would not have us bow to the authority of the sense of obligation 
on account of any hedonistic interest an our experience of it. 
But the case is not the same with the feelings of approbation and 
disapprobation. Feelings of approbation are distinctly pleas- 
urable ; and feelings of disapprobation are distinctly painful. 
In this connection we may notice one of the several fallacies 
which characterize all hedonistic theories. If all the pleasures 
of the approving consciences of all mankind were oquoad pleas- 
ures, to be placed in the scales with the pains which all mankind 
have suffered both in doing the right and in disapproving the 
wrong, there can be little doubt which way the scales would 
turn. In a word, the sufferings of humanity far exceed its 
pleasures as immediate results or accompaniments of obedience 
to the moral law — of following the moral ideal. Seeking for 
pleasure affords no sufficient impulse, not to say intelligent 
guide, for the development of a Moral Self. 

There is a fourth still more important difference between 
these two classes of feelings. The emotions with which men 
greet certain classes of conduct and certain types of character, 
objectively regarded, are very similar to certain non-moral 
emotions. What we have been speaking of as ethical 



THE MORAL SELF 291 

approbation or disapprobation is about as truly aesthetical. 
Thus the difference between the way in which men approve 
what they judge to be beautiful and what they judge to be 
morally right is not so much in the character of the feeling as 
in the nature of the objects. In the one case, it is a quality of 
being; in the other, a species of conduct. But conduct itself 
is an exhibition of certain qualities of personal life; and men 
are ready enough, are indeed readily enough compelled, to per- 
sonify the qualities of impersonal things. So that the hero, 
who overcomes obstacles by the force of his personality, be- 
comes admired for a sublimity which approaches that of the 
sea or the sky : and he is also approved as one possessed in large 
measure of what is morally good. Heroic goodness is particu- 
larly admirable from both the aesthetical and the ethical points 
of view. The qualities of heroism, whether in a good or in a 
bad cause, and whether in the interests of good or of bad inten- 
tions, cannot be considered as entirely non-moral in char- 
acter. 

The feelings of merit and demerit, with which moral judg- 
ments inevitably become complicated and by which they are 
enormously influenced, are still more complex and of a sec- 
ondary and social character. The feeling of merit involves a 
feeling of desert and a vague feeling of right. In it are in- 
cluded at least the following factors: (1) A feeling of obliga- 
tion to approve (I ought to be morally approbated by my fel- 
lows) ; (2) a feeling of right to assert a claim (I am entitled 
to some form of the good, which ought to come to me, because 
I have complied with this feeling of obligation) ; and (3) a 
vague feeling of another's duty as it were (thus, others ought 
to treat me " accordingly." On the contrary, the feeling of 
demerit involves the opposite of each of these three factors. The 
pleasant satisfaction which the feeling of merit affords, when its 
right is satisfied, is closely related to the mild pleasure of a 
gratified pride; the dissatisfaction following the failure to be 
approbated by others, and " to be treated accordingly,-'" is much 



292 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

more than an equivalent in its power to occasion pain. Here, 
again, we meet with another anomaly which impedes the 
smooth running of every hedonistic system of morals. The 
path along which duty leads, as marked out by the ethical feel- 
ings, is much less strewn with roses than with thorns. He 
who thinks to pay himself for doing what he ought, in coin of 
the feeling of merit, will surely fail in the business. Indeed, 
one of the most curious of those anomalies with which ethical 
study is full, is encountered here. It is, as a rule, the meanest 
and least moral men who have the most lively satisfactions from 
the sense of their own merit, and who most intensely feel their 
right to a reward, for the occasional small, meritorious services 
they render their fellow men. 

On the other hand, the purism which holds to such an in- 
dependent standard for measuring the right and wrong of 
conduct, as the judgment of the individual who pays no regard 
to the social judgments which are incorporated in the cus- 
toms, laws, and prevalent maxims, and who is uninfluenced by 
considerations of disapprobation from others, and by the feel- 
ing of deserving well of others, is maintaining a view of the 
nature of Moral Selfhood which neither accords with the data 
of moral life, as facts, nor with the most highly rational norm, 
or ideal of such a life. That these feelings of approbation and 
merit (and their opposites) are powerful social influences, no 
one can deny. Just as little, can the thoughtful student of 
man's moral evolution deny that the same feelings are, on the 
whole, conservative of the good, and promotive of the better, 
moral judgments to which they become attached. Moral self- 
hood can be developed only in society. Social and ethical unity, 
sufficient to constitute an environment not only favorable to, 
but even permissible of, such a development is secured by these 
emotional forces. And whenever the individual reaches a higher 
plane of the true moral life, by rising superior to the public 
standards, in obedience to the obligation or allurements of an 
inner ideal, he developes his own moral selfhood the better in 



THE MORAL SELF 293 

the form of a reasoned opposition to these standards. But if in 
rare cases he has, as it were, to stand alone, and voluntarily to 
relinquish the hope of human approbation and the right to 
claim merit for following the demands of his own moral con- 
sciousness, he still makes his appeal for sympathy and approval 
to a higher than the present human moral kinship. He has 
the approval of future generations, or of Xature as a Power 
that makes for righteousness, or of Heaven, with its " cloud of 
witnesses," or of God with whom to stand alone is reward 
enough. But this possession is a social good, which is somehow 
conceived of as justifying those judgments concerning the right 
and wrong of conduct which conform to a rational norm, an 
ultimate ideal. 

The second class of experiences which enforce the call to 
moral development by a constant revision of moral judgments, 
looking to a growth in moral intelligence, is of a much more 
subtile and, indeed, partially inexplicable character. It has to 
do with what we may venture to call the " internalization " of 
the moral judgment. By this it is intended to speak of the 
turning of the judgment inward upon the Self; and thus, of 
the attribution of all forms of ethical feeling — obligation to 
and not-to, approbation and disapprobation, merit and demerit 
— to the conscious states of the mind, to the passions, desires, 
affections, intentions, and purposes, irrespective of the forms of 
action in which they culminate and which are known to others 
as their external signs. In this way moral judgment becomes 
immediate s <? //-judgment. Without growth in the intelligent 
and accurate practice of self-judgment no real and high moral 
development can be reached. 

It does not require a large amount of self-consciousness to 
discover that actions, in one's own case and in the case of 
other fellows, spring from impulses of an emotional character. 
Of many of the most primitive and important of these im- 
pulses, the individual is only dimly and very imperfectly aware. 
Indeed, the basis of personal life and personal development is 



294 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

laid in reflexes of which consciousness takes little or no account. 
When such impulses appear in consciousness as motives or in- 
fluences to action, their origin, nature, and significance may 
not be understood at all. The psycho-physical mechanism is 
taking care of all this for the Self, without informing the Self 
as to what it is about. And even those sensory-motor re- 
flexes which have, as the word signifies, a conscious side to their 
origin, tend to take the form of unconscious habits in the sen- 
sory-motor organism; indeed, without this tendency on their 
part, the life of intelligence for the self-conscious mind could 
not be advanced. But there are other forms of emotional im- 
pulse whose very nature is such as to constitute disturbances, 
or affective conditions, within the conscious mind. They are 
those appetites, passions, desires, sentiments, intentions, or 
deliberated but feeling-full plans, which every Self is obliged 
to recognize as its very own. On account of their emotional 
character, or inherent tendency to compel conduct, they are 
lumped together as so-called "motives," under a common ex- 
pressive but somewhat misleading category. 

So far as conduct is a matter for external observation, and 
for testing by the application of the standard of what is cus- 
tomarily approved, either " good " or " bad " conduct may 
arise from a variety of different and even conflicting emotions. 
One man's motive to kill may be avarice, another's patriotism; 
still others may do the same deed from motives of hatred, sym- 
pathy, jealousy, or love. Doing a favor may be due either to 
thoughtless or to thoughtful kindness; to a sycophant's desire 
to curry favor in return, to the wish to save, or to the wish 
to corrupt. And so all the way through, in the case of all the 
so-called virtues. There is no deed so devilish in appearance 
that it may not spring from some motive which the moral 
judgment -of the individual consecrates as right and merito- 
rious; and none so seemingly angelic that it may not arise 
in the foulest sources of passion or prejudice. 

It does not appear that children, unless expressly enjoined 



THE MORAL SELF 295 

and instructed, readily apply moral quality to the motives 
rather than to the deed. Even when diligently taught not to 
cherish " bad hearts/ 5 or to indulge secretly in " bad feelings," 
obedience to the injunction in any thorough way is altogether 
too mature an exercise for the childish intellect. In the earlier 
stages of moral development, the satisfaction of the impulse 
is the dominant consideration; its character, as a subject for 
moral judgment, and, indeed!, — for so a certain school of 
ethical writers would have us suppose — as the only proper sub- 
ject, of a truly moral judgment, is of little concern. If the 
savage or primitive man was, in this respect, no more and no 
less savage and immoral, than the average school-boy of the 
best Christian communities to-day, he troubled himself little 
about his "bad heart," or about the impurity and animal 
baseness of the motives underlying most of the conduct which 
conformed to the then prevalent social customs. 

It cannot be denied, however, that at present a larger and 
the better portion of the race do hold, and do practice, the 
theory of morality which attaches the moral judgment to the 
self-conscious conditions of the mind. It is no longer the case 
that only the action is regarded as good or bad, according to 
its conformity to custom; the Self is regarded as good or 
bad, according to the feelings it indulges or cherishes. Sociolo- 
gists who deny this, or treat lightly of it, overlook the most 
wonderful and inexplicable of all the data concerning man's 
moral development. It is not mere external facts, such as are 
essentially non-moral facts, but the facts of estimates, the 
" value-facts," which reveal the essential nature of man's moral 
selfhood. 

How did this marvellous inward tendency of the moral judg- 
ment come about; and what were the influences which bore 
down on man to make him search himself, and find within him- 
self, the true field for judgment as to the morally good and 
the morally bad? From the point of view of evolutionary 
ethics, no question can be proposed which is more difficult of 



296 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

a satisfactory answer. Something undoubtedly — and, perhaps, 
very much — must be allowed to prolonged human experience 
with the effects of motives so-called. The more essential and 
primitive virtues of courage, patience, endurance, and tribal 
sympathy, as well as those of the domestic and friendly affec- 
tions, counted most heavily in the earlier conditions of tribal 
and individual life and welfare. They, therefore, came to be 
approbated and deemed meritorious, as of-and-in-themselves 
considered. Their opposites came, under the same influences, 
to experience the results of the opposition which these condi- 
tions made necessary. In a word, the historical development 
of the virtues in accordance with the experimental testing of 
their benefits to the race is a partial explanation of the prefer- 
ence given to certain motives as compared with other motives, 
or inner states. 

But by far the most important of those influences which sug- 
gest and enforce the " internalization " of moral judgments 
are of a religious character. From the earliest dawn of human 
history, and in those regions of twilight or nearly complete 
obscurity where detailed history is difficult or impossible, 
men have believed in invisible spiritual agencies, which they 
conceived to be both like themselves, and yet also superior to 
themselves. Upon their relations to these spirits they have 
thought themselves to be dependent, at least in some meas- 
ure, for human woes or human welfare. These spirits take 
note of man's actions, especially as his actions affect them or 
their favorites among men; and they treat man accordingly. 
But the gods, being somewhat super-human, know about men 
things which men do not know about each other. The rela- 
tions of enmity or friendship in which the spirit of man stands 
to these invisible and super-human spirits are, of necessity, 
of a more internal and spiritual character. Who shall conceal 
the movements of his own inner Self from those mysterious 
beings who have so little difficulty in keeping their own 
thoughts, intentions, and movements concealed? For the gods 



THE MORAL SELF 297 

are very cunning, and know many things hidden from men. 
But as this cruder form of religious belief developes, — and 
this, largely in dependence upon the development of moral 
Selfhood in man, — the conception of an omniscient and per- 
fect Ethical Spirit, who searches the heart and desires nothing 
less than purity of heart, becomes of all causes most potent for 
the "internalization" of the moral judgment. 

The study of the social and religious forces which have 
evolved an elaborate doctrine of the virtues, and of the corre- 
sponding theories as to moral sanctions and moral ideals which 
this doctrine implies, throws a flood of light upon the nature 
and evolution of the Moral Self. And yet the evolutionary 
theory seems here, as elsewhere, to meet with the limitation 
of assumptions in which, as unexplained and perhaps inex- 
plicable, its very explanations themselves lie concealed. The 
fact is this: The spirit of man has somehow come to recog- 
nize within itself intrinsic differences among its own self-con- 
scious states. Some are higher, nobler, more worthy of ap- 
proval and more meritorious than are others. To exercise 
them, and to be the kind of spirit in whom they control, is made 
compulsory bj 7- the distinctively ethical feeling of obligation. 

" There are two important general assumptions to which one 
is brought by a study of the nature and development of moral 
judgment. First, man's intelligence is rightfully regarded 
as obligating him to its own use in planning and guiding his 
own conduct. Noblesse oblige, — and not less the nobility of 
rationality than the nobility of rank or birth. Thus the 
thought is led around again to a position which is in neigh- 
borly contiguity with the position from which the discussion 
of the nature of ethical judgment took its departure: so-called 
' Conscience/ as a matter of intellectual equipment for such 
judgment, is no whit different from so-called ordinary intelli- 
gence. But this ' ordinary intelligence ' is human intelligence : 
it is man's intellect, in its full use, culminating in judgment 
as to the right and wrong of conduct. Moreover, this use of 



298 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

intelligence is itself either right or wrong — in the ethical mean- 
ing of the words: for this use is a species of conduct. And 
the moral feelings of obligation, of approbation and disap- 
probation, and of merit and demerit, have as much place, and 
as binding authority, in respect of this, as of any other species 
of conduct. If we generalize this fact which, like a silent 
postulate, permeates all our estimates of the nature and value 
of ethical judgments, and then bring our generalization into 
correspondence with that conclusion to which all our study of 
the nature of a Moral Self is pointing the way; we may antici- 
pate the following conclusions: The intellectual processes are, 
of course, essential to the existence of moral Selfhood; the 
noblest use of them is characteristic of the Ideal Self; and 
such a use is morally obligatory, necessarily to be approbated 
by moral consciousness, and to be considered meritorious; 
for it is an essential part of the realization of the Ideal of 
a perfect Self existing in social relations with other selves. 

" The second assumption involved in the doctrine of ethical 
judgment is this: Only through the exercise of intelligence 
does the so-called f motive ? pass over, as it were, into the 
choice and into the deed. It is not motive alone, or judgment 
alone, or deliberate choice alone, whether followed or not by 
a successful executive action, to which the qualification of moral 
goodness or badness should be attached. It is rather to the 
total Self in action — Feeling, Intellect, and Will — in a living 
unity. Motives must, indeed, be judged morally; but they 
must also be more or less willed, in order really to become 
motives. Judgments, too, are motived and subjects of volition. 
The highest expressions of will, the deliberate choices, are them- 
selves the subject of both moral feeling and moral judgment. 
Good intentions alone do not constitute a perfect moral good; 
the conceived results are an integral part of the finished piece 
of conduct. Clear conception is an intellectual performance. 
A virtuous intellect is essential to a virtuous man." 

We are now in a position to understand the ethical develop- 



THE MORAL SELF 299 

ment of mankind in so far as it is due to the growth of in- 
telligence in the race. This evolution follows the same laws as 
those which control man's total development of intelligence. In 
a certain somewhat loose way. three stages may be distinguished. 
In the earliest stage it is feeling largely, if not almost wholly, 
which determines the judgment; in this stage the judgment is 
scarcely more than a declaration of the fact of feeling. Chil- 
dren and childish men think little as to why they feel and 
therefore judge as they do: they know almost nothing of the 
influences which are operative upon their own minds. This 
is true whether these influences belong to the original constitu- 
tion of human nature, or are themselves the results of the pre- 
vious experiences of the race. In a word, amongst savages as 
amongst the children of civilized communities, judgments about 
the right and wrong of conduct arise in blind, instinctive feel- 
ings. If we could get very near to the so-called primitive 
man, we should undoubtedly find him yet more a creature and 
.ibject of impulsive feeling. We should find him — if as 
yet man, however primitive — moved by selfish passions and 
emotions to do certain thing= which feelings of sympathy and 
sentiments of obligation and of ethical and aesthetical admira- 
tion and approbation were moving him not to do. We should 
find him in this strange conflict of feeling, this condition of 
schism between the higher and lower self ; but the schism would 
not be comprehended: nor would the grounds be recognized 
on which the authority of the higher moral consciousness must 
be reposed. These grounds must be wrought out in experience; 
they must be discovered and proved by the growth of intelli- 
gence. 

The second stage in the evolution of moral judgments is 
reached whenever experience of the effects of conduct has em- 
bodied itself in customs: or in the form of moral maxims, 
precepts, and regulations; or in the shape »f something re- 
sembling a code of conduct defining what is to be esteemed 
right, what wrong, by the community. But even at this stage 



300 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

the multitude of individuals in their private ethical judgments 
only echo and reiterate, as they for the most part unques- 
tioningly accept, the generalizations reached in some form by 
the generations of their predecessors in the moral life. In 
this stage, whenever the attempt is made to give reasons for 
any particular judgment, such an attempt ends in a reference 
to the fact, as bare fact, of the conclusions already accepted 
by the majority. Thus most of the current reasoning on moral 
matters might be summarized in the one major premise for 
the standard ethical syllogism: It is right to follow the cus- 
toms; doing right is doing as the ancients have done and as 
people generally do now. 

But even this stage in the evolution of ethical judgment 
cannot come into existence, much less long continue to exist, 
without certain individuals at least making considerable ad- 
vances into a third and higher stage. In this third stage, the 
science and philosophy of conduct become, to some extent, the 
interest and the attainment of the multitude of individuals 
of whom society consists. 

The history of ethical evolution by no means, of course, war- 
rants us in making a clean-cut separation between these dif- 
ferent stages of man's ethical progress. Other factors and 
laws than those which are distinctly intellectual take part in 
this evolution. No community at any time can be regarded as 
stationary in either one of these three stages, to the exclusion 
of all examples of the other stages. 

Amongst the lowest savages are found some who, more than 
others, think for themselves touching matters of conduct: 
amongst the most highly cultured ethically, the majority, for 
most of their ethical judgments, trust to unreasoned feeling 
or accept the conclusions handed down from preceding genera- 
tions. And it is well that it is so. For thus the " cake of cus- 
tom" is formed; only thus could enough of uniformity be se- 
cured to constitute a true and safe social environment such 
as is the necessary presupposition of any ethical life or ethical 



THE MORAL SELF 301 

development. But all the race — or at least, that portion of 
it which is undergoing a real moral evolution — is learning 
more and more how to make up its mind, on the ground of 
an enlarging experience and by the use of its improved powers 
of reasoning, regarding the right and wrong of conduct. A 
progress in ethical enlightenment is certainly taking place with 
this portion of mankind ; but whether this portion, or the whole 
of mankind, is growing better in disposition and in moral pur- 
poses, in proportion to its increased enlightenment — why! this 
is another and distinctly broader and more difficult question. 
It is not enough, however, to constitute a Moral Self that the 
ethical feelings should arise in consciousness and become self- 
appropriated; or that intelligence should discover what moral 
judgments correspond to the established customs in matters 
of conduct, or even to the intrinsic qualities of the different 
feelings, sentiments, purposes, and habits of the self-conscious 
mind. The development of moral selfhood, especially as it 
involves an improvement and rise in the scale of moral values, 
depends upon self-determination. And, indeed, self-determina- 
tion has been either implied or expressly insisted upon in all 
that has thus far been said about the evolution of moral in- 
telligence, both in the individual and in the race. To form 
intelligent and morally right judgments, there must be at- 
tention, discrimination, choice ; the intellect is active in all this ; 
the truly moral judgment is formed, not forced. Moreover, 
ethical judgment not only involves, but normally and neces- 
sarily issues in, acts of self-determination. Its predicate is 
the right or wrong of conduct; its issue is in doing something, 
even if this doing be only to suppress, or to indulge and cher- 
ish, some secret emotion or intention. The moral problem 
before the individual is : " Will you determine yourself in 
this way or in that; will you have this piece or that other 
piece of conduct to be your veTy own ? " In order, then, to 
secure the development of moral selfhood, self-determination 
must become moral freedom. But this is not to say that the 



302 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

human mind must attain any wholly new species of activity. 
If man were the mind that he is, without being also a Moral 
Self, nothing would have to be added to his so-called active 
powers, as such, in order to constitute him a morally free spirit. 
What would be necessary would be only (a truly momentous 
"only") to endow him with ethical feelings, and then to place 
him in social relations with others of his own kind. It is not 
ethics which creates for physics and biology and cerebral physi- 
ology, the mystery of self-determination. The mystery is there ; 
and the fact of such self-determination is the limit which these 
sciences have to accept in all their explanations of every phe- 
nomenon with which the active human mind has anything to 
do. Moreover, as we have already shown, neither the theory of 
knowledge nor the metaphysics of man or of things can explain 
or confute this fact of the self-determining character of self- 
conscious mind. To be self-determining is really to be what it 
essentially is. The antinomies in the epistemological realm 
which are designed to disprove the reality of experience are 
mere logical abstractions, pale ghosts of a hypothetical nature 
which have no corresponding real existences. All real exist- 
ences have natures which are more or less — however uncon- 
sciously — self-determining. And in this irresolvable, unanalyz- 
able, and inexplicable mystery, the sciences which deal with 
things find, on the one hand, an inexhaustible store of fictitious 
explanations, and, on the other hand, an immovable limit to 
all truly scientific explanations. 

Still further, it has been shown that the whole conception 
of a causal nexus, and of laws determining the relations of 
things within this causal nexus, itself arises from man's experi- 
ence, as a consciously self-determining being with other beings 
which he cannot consciously determine. And there is not in 
all the history of human intellectual development a more un- 
justifiable exhibition of intellectual arrogance, than the claim 
that the doctrine of man's conscious self-determination has 
been, or indeed can be, disproved by the conclusions of the 



THE MORAL SELF 303 

physical and natural sciences. All that science knows, or 
ever can know, about reality and about the relations of really 
existent beings, whether unconscious but self-like things or 
self-conscious minds, is dependent upon its keeping faith with 
it own underlying assumptions. 

It belongs, then, to the philosophy of conduct in dealing with 
the problem of moral freedom, to avail itself of what the theory 
of knowledge and the metaphysics of mind have already made 
clear. The problem is this: How does man, as a moral being 
endowed with ethical feelings and placed in social relations, 
develope and exhibit that kind and degree of self-determination 
which is necessary for a Moral Self? In weighing this prob- 
lem the reasons for affirming the reality of self-determination 
are not only largely increased, but are also raised to a much 
higher stage of importance and significance. The metaphysical 
difficulties, and so-called scientific objections, are on the con- 
trary in no respect essentially changed. From the theoretical 
point of view, then, the affirmative side of the problem of 
moral freedom has a great advantage. From the practical side, 
and as a matter of concernment for a rational view of human 
moral nature, and of the laws of moral life, the reasons for 
espousing this side are mandatory. 

" The possession of any degree of moral freedom, and the 
development of its higher and more significant degrees, are de- 
pendent in all cases upon the possession and development of all 
the faculties which go to make up man's moral nature. 1 The 
problem of ethics is therefore not decided, it is not even prop- 
erly stated, when only the facts that concern the purely volun- 
tary aspects of consciousness are considered. Xeither mere 
arbitrariness of will, nor machine-like and necessitated action 
of will, can constitute the basis of a truly moral freedom. For, 
indeed, the problem includes much more than this. Choices 

iFor a fuller treatment of the subject see the Chapter on 
" Moral Freedom " in the author's Philosophy of Conduct, from 
which the following quotations are taken. 



304 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

to follow the ideal forms of that which is esteemed morally 
good cannot be made by a mere fiat of will, whether wholly 
unmotived or strictly determined; the presence in consciousness 
of such ideals and the conscious evaluation of them from the 
moral point of view is necessary to their choice. I cannot will 
to adhere to my feeling of obligation rather than yield to my 
passion or desire, unless I have such feeling of obligation; nor 
can I choose that course of conduct which I judge to be right, 
unless I am capable of a judgment which shall bring the con- 
duct under the category of the right. And without the pow- 
erful influence from the feelings of moral approval and of 
merit (and their opposites) it cannot be contended that men 
would ever attain to a genuine moral freedom. It is in the 
neglect of these considerations that some of the antinomies which 
are forced into the problem of a so-called freedom of the will 
have their origin. l Freedom of the will ' is, as we have already 
had abundant reason to observe, a term which would better be 
abandoned by ethics. Moral freedom for the human Self; — ■ 
What is it in fact, and essentially, in spite of its many degrees 
of intensity, so to say, and its different forms of manifestation? 
— this is the primary ethical question. And has moral freedom 
in fact such a character that, before the same moral conscious- 
ness which is its own severe and, when well cultivated, intelli- 
gent critic, we may justify the conclusion that the present 
social system has in it at least the seeds of rationality? 

" Certain facts of indubitable experience exist, on the basis 
of which may be placed our conception of the nature of man's 
choices, and of the part which they play in the moral life and 
moral development. But even these facts lose all their highest 
value and most of their significance, when we attempt to regard 
them as separable from the development of human life, in the 
individual and in the race. 

" One word more of preliminary cautioning seems desirable. 
This has reference to the chief fallacy in discussing this prob- 
lem which affects those metaphysically inclined. The fallacy 



THE MORAL SELF 305 

is that of mistaking conceptions for entities, functions for 
realities, relations for pre-existent and efficient causes. In a 
word, it is the fallacy of hypostasizing. For example, e Law 9 
never does anything, or accounts for anything, — no matter 
how imposing the capital with which one spells the word. 
' Necessity ' creates no real bond ; and e Chance ' and e Contin- 
gency ' — whether whispered with bated breath by the frightened 
worshipper of the great modern World-Machine, or boldly pro- 
claimed by the avowed enemy of such a monstrosity — can no 
more injure the existing arrangement of things than the most 
inevitable ' Fate ' can conserve this arrangement by preventing 
man's interference with it all. Ghosts of abstractions, whether 
theological or scientific, whether redolent of the smell of the 
tombs in which they should have been buried ages ago, or 
emitting whiffs of the latest patent embalming fluid, can effect 
neither good nor harm outside of the mind of man. And when 
one is solemnly told that the Law of Causation forbids this or 
compels the other; that human self-determination would 
destroy the integrity of the physical Universe; or that the 
Conservation and Correlation of Energy does not admit of in- 
fluences ' passing over/ etc., from the physical to the psychical 
realm; one may always demand a re-examination of the war- 
rant in facts for such a sweeping use of ideas whose force is 
only that of the highest potency of logical generalization. 

" What now are those facts of a well-nigh, if not quite uni- 
versal human experience, from which flows the conception of a 
real moral freedom for man ; and to which this conception must 
be referred in the effort to determine more critically its rational 
import? These facts may be divided between two related but 
not identical forms of consciousness. They may be called the 
consciousness of ability and the consciousness of imputa- 
bility; or the consciousness of the Self as active and 
the consciousness of the Self as responsible. As these 
facts appear in the stream of the individual's conscious 
life, and as they become data for the conception of man's 



306 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

moral freedom, they are expressed by such language as the 
following : < I can ' and < I know that I can ? ; and because ' I 
ought to have ' (or I ought not to have), I am worthy of ap- 
proval (or of disapproval) and of merit (or of demerit). In 
the one case, the Self contemplates itself as in the presence of 
its own deed and affirms that the choice to do, or not to do, 
in spite of all external and internal influence, is, nevertheless, 
its very own. I make my choice ; and the ' 1 9 that chooses is 
not simply the being that was yesterday, or even a moment 
since; the rather is it the living, present, here-and-now-being 
of the Self. In the other case the Self contemplates its own 
deed as already done, and affirms that this deed which was 
chosen, together with a certain greater or less amount of the 
consequences following from the deed, belongs to itself; and 
in consequence, so does also the blame or praise, the punishment 
or the reward. I did this thing, for it was my choice ; and my 
living, present Self doth reasonably assume as its own the 
moral predicaments of its own choosing. Such are the facts of 
human experience, when this experience reaches that stage of 
development which affords the clearest and most trustworthy 
data for a conception of moral freedom. But with inferior de- 
grees the same experience manifests itself as an almost cease- 
less accompaniment of, and a substantial factor in, the unfold- 
ing of the moral life." 

Let us now examine somewhat more carefully these two 
classes of general facts belonging to man's ethical consciousness. 

Nothing is more primitive or essential in the development 
of personal life than the consciousness of power. Without it, 
no Self can exist, whether from the point of view of its own self- 
consciousness or from the point of view of the outside ob- 
server. To convert this into a species of moral faculty it is 
only necessary that it should be recognized by the Self as an 
ability to choose one piece of conduct, or course of conduct, 
rather than another; and, among the different soliciting or con- 
flicting motives to select one as preferred and adopted rather 



THE MORAL SELF 307 

than the others. By its possessor this ability is invariably 
recognized as belonging to the Self, as a species of self-activity; 
but also as an ability which has its limitations and its degrees, 
and which may be lost and regained, or irrecoverably lost. 
The complex truths of experience of this kind are expressed in 
such popular language as the following : " I know I can " ; "I 
know I could have "; "I do not know whether I can "; "I 
fear I cannot " ; or " I am sure I shall not be able," etc. This 
consciousness of ability to determine one's position toward one's 
external behavior, and toward one's emotional impulses and in- 
ternal tendencies and solicitations to action, culminates in 
deliberate choice. In deliberate choice, where types of character 
and ideals of conduct come before the mind to solicit it for its 
voluntary adoption and allegiance, moral selfhood attains its 
highest possible form of self-realization. But where the choices 
are habitually subjugated by passions that blind the moral 
judgment, moral freedom may ebb so low that little of moral 
self-hood remains to hide behind the mask of being a man. 

As to the consciousness of imputability and the immense in- 
fluence which it has upon all human affairs in all manner of 
social conditions and relations, there can be no doubt. The 
phenomena of ethical pride and shame, of the claims made by 
the pure conscience and the remorseful consciousness to be self- 
rewarded or self-punished, show the workings of this influence 
in the life of the individual. The universal customs and the 
language of men with reference to each other's character and 
deeds, show the strength of the same influence in society at 
large. Is wrong done? The blame cannot be left mid-air, or 
assigned to beings conceived of as mere lifeless and unconscious 
things; it must be located in some at least gwasf-personal 
being; it must be imputed to some Self. It is true that this 
fact of the imputability of conduct is obscured, or made in- 
effective and bizarre by crude theories as to the nature of the 
Self. It is also true that a certain solidarity of the race seems 
to assert itself in the form habitually taken by the conscious- 



308 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ness corresponding to the term. Members of the same family, 
tribe, nation, race, often seem compelled to feel a portion of 
the responsibility for deeds that are obviously done, not by 
themselves, but by a sort of corporation in which they are 
involved as members. In the development of moral judgments 
and moral ideals, however, the changes in the conceptions of 
personal life do not impair but rather strengthen the conclu- 
sion. Eesponsibility attaches reasonably to those beings only 
who have moral freedom; imputability implies moral discern- 
ment and ability to determine conduct and character for one's 
self. For the total complex fact is not simply the fact of 
conduct imputed and treated accordingly; it is rather the fact 
of conduct imputable and so reasonably treated accordingly. 
The " scape-goat " theory and practice are in a measure diffi- 
cult to avoid; but to enlightened moral judgment they become 
unreasonable and even intolerable. 

After what has already been said in various connections 
about the metaphysics of nature and of mind it is scarcely 
necessary to do more than briefly to mention the argu- 
ments which are customarily opposed to the reality of a devel- 
opment that implies moral freedom for the self-conscious and 
self-determining mind. Even in this late day some writers, 
indeed, continue to quote the dictum attributed to Spinoza 
which identifies man's consciousness of ability with his igno- 
rance of the determining causes. Man is no more free than 
would be the arrow which became conscious of going toward 
the mark, but knew nothing of the science of strains, pressure 
from atmosphere, down-pull of gravity, etc. Such a bit of 
material would of necessity imagine itself free. But this ab- 
straction of an arrow no more resembles a real self-conscious 
mind than did that other abstraction of an arrow which, ac- 
cording to the logic of the Greek Sophists, could not move at 
all! Neither Nature in the large, as modern science knows it, 
nor the nature of a self-conscious and self-determining mind, 
bear any resemblance to empty space and inert matter; to the 



THE MORAL SELF 309 

Void of Greek philosophy or to the purely a priori and logical 
System of Spinoza, with its barren " Affects " and statical Ke- 
lations. 

Scarcely less perverse and contrary to the facts of experience 
is the objection which would substitute for the rich content of 
a self-conscious and self-determining life a sort of rigid and 
foredoomed mechanism of psychoses, constructed after the 
analogy of a piece of physical machinery. A choice is then 
offered between this mechanical theory and the theory 'of 
purely unreasoned and incalculable arbitrariness. Such is not, 
however, the alternative; for neither of these theories expresses 
at all truly the actual life of the Moral Self. If, in fact, we are 
called on to explain the workings of the so-called faculties un- 
der the control of a causal nexus, we may as well say that the 
will governs intellect and controls feelings as that intellect 
guides, and feeling influences or determines, the will. Neither 
does it express the truth of experience simply to assert that 
motives influence the will according to the apparent or the real 
intensity of their motive force. On the contrary, motives are 
chosen on account of their excellence, or relation to an ideal, 
whenever they are brought into the focus of a truly moral con- 
sciousness. And in all truly moral transactions, it is the attitude 
of the Self, as self -determining, toward the emotional impulses, 
which decides the question of fact, whether the impulses shall 
become "motives" to action in the fullest meaning of the 
term. 

Finally : No philosophy of conduct is possible which does 
not find room for the facts of experience, and for the theo- 
retical construction of moral principles, that are implied in a 
valid conception of " Character." It is under the laws which 
control the formation of character that man gains such moral 
freedom as he has, and uses this freedom in the continuance 
and development of a truly moral life. But, on the other hand, 
the conception of character cannot itself be formed without 
taking into account those conscious experiences in which the 



310 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

conception of moral freedom has its origin; and any such con- 
ception of character as contravenes and annuls the conception 
of freedom is itself unfit to command our intellectual allegiance 
and is injurious to the morals of mankind. What men call 
" character " is no entity, no self -existent principle, capable of 
playing an independent part in the dynamics of the moral life. 
The nature of any existence is merely the sum-total of those 
more uniform ways of behavior by which we are able, for pur- 
poses of knowledge, and the communication of knowledge, to 
distinguish it from other existences. But the character of a 
Self is a quite different affair from the nature of a Thing. For 
the character of a Self always includes the choices, and the 
results of the choices, in exercising which it has been self-de- 
termining. What ethics seeks is not some hidden statical core 
of reality which stands in the relation of a universal and omnip- 
otent cause to each of the individual choices; the reality of 
the individual Moral Self is rather itself in a measure the 
constantly varying resultant of these choices. A man's char- 
acter is not something external to himself which, as a finished 
product of the past or as an e:r£ra-voluntary, determining 
force, gives the entire reason why he chooses as he does choose. 
On a basis of inherited potentialities, and under a variety of 
influences from the total, constantly changing environment, 
and in a certain subjection to the principle of habit, Every 
Self, nevertheless, progressively determines its own character. 
It will, of course, be seen that our view throws complete 
discredit on the empty boast of a so-called scientific Determin- 
ism. It is vain to say that if we only knew all the motives, 
both as coming from outside influences, — causes of the environ- 
ment, — and also as due to the acquired character of the indi- 
vidual, — causes of habit; then we should be able to predict 
with a perfect certainty every new choice, whether as between 
motives or of different courses of conduct. The reply to this 
proposition is that the proposition itself is intrinsically absurd. 
No such knowledge can ever be conceived of as applying to a 



THE MORAL SELF 311 

true Moral Self. A true Moral Self, of its very nature, can 
never be supposed to be in the condition of a statical and wholly 
calculable kind of existence and habit of behavior. The very 
essence of moral development is such as to secure a lasting resi- 
duum of the unexplained and the scientifically inexplicable. 
Do we need again to point out how all the explanations of sci- 
ence end in the unexplained nature of things and of minds ? 

Those great principles which are true for the other main 
branches of philosophy are also true for the philosophy of con- 
duct. These principles group themselves about two compre- 
hensive conceptions which seem to us to be shaping the thought 
and the conduct of the present age. They are, of course, not 
new, either in their total complexion or in any of their more im- 
portant factors; otherwise they could not be so comprehensive 
and influential as they are. But they are receiving new and 
enlarged meanings, and they are made to serve more extended 
and illumining uses. These are the conception of Evolu- 
tion, of the principle of becoming, and the conception of Self- 
hood, especially as having its roots in, and as reaching out 
into, social connections. It is enlarged and truer notions of 
Personality and of Development which are sought by the reflect- 
ive thinking of the age. 

When, then, such fulness of significance and range of influ- 
ence are claimed for the conception of the Moral Self, it must 
not be imagined that any of the legitimate rights of the other 
conception, the conception of evolution, are invaded or denied. 
The history of morals, and the current opinions and practices of 
the time, as well as all the most profound and comprehensive of 
ethical principles, cannot be understood without giving due in- 
fluence to both these conceptions. The Moral Self, in a process 
of Development toward the Social Ideal, — this complex of con- 
ceptions contains the whole domain of investigation for the 
student of ethics. What is the essential nature of the subject of 
conduct, the ethical being of man? It is moral selfhood, as it 
has already been described. But for every individual man, and 



312 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

for the whole race of men, conduct is some sort of a career ; it is 
subject to the principle of continuity; it is a matter of history, 
and of the growth from beginnings toward ends, in the ongo- 
ing of time; it is something which can neither be described 
nor even be conceived of, except as the individual is regarded 
in his physical, and especially in his social, environment. The 
principle of evolution applies, then, in ethics; but in no super- 
ficial or merely external way. The Moral Self is a life-growth, 
and so subject — although on its own special terms, as it were — 
to a continuous development. 

The essential factors and prominent aspects of moral de- 
velopment may remain the same amidst a number of forms in 
which the Ideal assumes more definite outlines; and in spite 
of a great variety of concrete habits of action, under varying 
conditions and changes in the social environment. This Ideal 
may be the idea of a so-called moral law, or the idea of a 
perfected personality, or the idea of a Divine Will; or it may 
be some yet more inclusive form of a social constitution. With 
one good man the object which seems worthy of commanding 
him may be conceived of as an impersonal principle, an un- 
selfish and unswerving obedience to which is recognized as 
summing up the entire obligation of man; with another, the 
conception of an infinitely worthy personal Being, in whose 
personal characteristics they may share who make the attain- 
ment of this ideal the object of their life-endeavor, may be 
substituted for the conception of an impersonal principle. With 
still another, the perfectibility by human efforts, of society 
seems to furnish the good, to strive for which with the strenu- 
ous life, is the whole duty of him who would attain the supreme 
moral Good. 

Each of these, and all other forms of defining that ideal 
which is the perfect satisfaction and permanent source of in- 
spiration for the development of moral selfhood, is quite likely 
to be marred by deficiencies, or to include subordinate elements 
which would better be left out. The possibility of a conclusive 



THE MORAL SELF 313 

speculative treatment of this Ideal will come before us for dis- 
cussion later on. But we wish now to call attention to the truth 
that the very attempt to form any ideal of conduct in so com- 
prehensive and loftly a fashion, and to place the ideal upon 
a basis of experience, while admitting the necessity for trust- 
ing the better sentiments and the artistic imagination, marks 
a high stage in the moral evolution of mankind. 

The Moral Ideal is itself the subject of evolution, — neces- 
sarily so; for it is the mental construct of the Moral Self, and 
therefore dependent for its very excellence upon the stage of 
its own moral development which the constructive mind has 
reached. And moral development here includes all kinds of 
development; for they are all dependent in a measure upon 
man's own conduct; and man's conduct is the sphere of 
morality. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE MORALLY GOOD: ITS KINDS (THE VIRTUES) AND 
ITS UNITY 

The intimations which were brought forward at the close 
of the last chapter require to be further explained and defended. 
To accomplish this end, two lines of investigation need to be 
pursued. One of these consists in the study of the evolution 
of moral judgments as embodied in certain conceptions and 
principles which are esteemed to be of a more or less ex- 
tended, if not quite universal, application. The other subjects 
these same conceptions and principles to a speculative process in 
which their real significance is made clear, and the basis in 
Beality on which they repose is disclosed. Only in this way 
can philosophy decide upon the place and value of moral ideals 
in the system of nature, or as essential "moments" in the 
Being of the World. For philosophy insists upon asking ques- 
tions which the so-called science of ethics, whether pursued by 
the methods of descriptive history or from the evolutionary 
and explanatory points of view, cannot decide. Whence, in 
the last analysis come the sanctions and the ideals of man's 
unfolding moral life; and is not the Universe itself ethical to 
the core? 

When we compare the development of moral judgments, as 
applied to forms of external conduct, with the development of 
moral judgment as applied to typical forms of the inner life, 
we note a marked difference in the results. There is far greater 
variety in customs, as judged from the ethical point of view, 
than in the motives, or conscious states of emotion, desire, and 
intention, out of which actions are supposed materially to 
spring. That the morally progressive part of the race has 
evolved a fairly consistent and notably uniform doctrine of 

314 



THE MORALLY GOOD 315 

the virtues is a historical fact. And so far as the development 
can be traced backward, it is found that this doctrine, while 
placing greatly different degrees of emphasis upon the relative 
importance of particular virtues, has remained throughout es- 
sentially the same. No truly good man, no really bad man, 
would behave to-day in England or America as he would have 
behaved in ancient Egypt or Babylon. But the character of 
the good, or of the bad man, if it could reveal itself to the 
social moral consciousness as being what it really is, would be 
in many respects essentially the same to be approved or disap- 
proved, in all places and all times. The Andaman Islanders, 
the native Australians, the Zulus, know a good man and com- 
mend him, when they understand him; and the Christian mis- 
sionary recognizes in them the same virtues, however different 
the customary ways of expressing them, which he is striving 
to cultivate in himself. 

This accepted practical doctrine of the virtuous life is, how- 
ever, neither self-conscious nor scholastic. It is a practical 
attitude toward a rather indiscriminate lot of personal char- 
acteristics, rather than a rational appreciation of an idea which 
includes them all. It is an unreasoned view of many virtues 
(or their opposites), rather than a rational appreciation of the 
essential character of virtue. What is the " essence " — or real 
nature — of Virtue? is the question which we are about to raise. 

It would doubtless facilitate inquiry if there were some uni- 
versally accepted classification of the virtues. But there is 
none. The classification most favored by the advocates of a 
purely evolutionary and utilitarian theory of ethics — into ego- 
istic and altruistic — is both inadequate and misleading. In 
searching for some germ of virtuous feeling, which nominally 
belongs to human nature, it is customary to find it in those 
emotional impulses which may be summarized under the name 
" Sympathy." Now it is true that men could not develope 
socially, and so could not develope morally, — or, for that matter, 
be moral at all, — without a large equipment of feelings which 



316 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

may be grouped under this general term. And, indeed, most of 
the lower animals manifest similar forms of social impulses. 
There is, however, no one form of sympathy; there are many 
sympathies. There are as many as there are forms of feeling 
which are specific, — feelings of kinship, or " of the kind." 
Anger, jealousy, fear, love, hate, pride, shame, ambition, esteem, 
etc. — may all be either egoistic or altruistic, according to the 
occasion which calls them forth, or the object toward which 
they are directed. It would even be not wholly improper to 
say that the same exercises of feeling are both egoistic and 
altruistic in the same individual, and at the same time. Of 
every Self it is inevitably true that a large part of Ms Self is 
a social Self. The Ego does not exist as separable, in idea or 
in action, wholly from every Alter. A man's wife, children, 
friends, enemies, town, tribe, country, are "others"; but at 
the same time they are "his own." 

There are also certain sympathetic feelings, and altruistic 
actions flowing from such feelings, which are not only morally 
weak but positively immoral. While there are some of the vir- 
tues, such as courage, fidelity, and steadfastness, which are 
more fundamental and essential for the earlier moral develop- 
ment of the individual and the race, than is the virtue of so- 
called " benevolence." 

We must then return to the point of starting for our investi- 
gation into the essential nature of virtue, with these two con- 
victions. There is rather an indefinite number of virtues (as so 
judged by the consent of the race) ; and they admit of various 
forms of classification ; but the " virtuousness " which is com- 
mon to them all has its essential quality made known, only 
when it can be discovered, what is the ideal standard with which 
they are to be compared. 

For purposes of convenience chiefly, although also on account 
of the theoretical suggestions which will be found to be con- 
cealed in it, we adopt what we will call the " psychological " 
classification of the virtues. But the term must not be over- 



THE MORALLY GOOD Sir 

pressed, and so misunderstood. This division recognizes three 
main classes of virtues : 1 virtues of the will; (2) virtues of 
the intellect; (3) virtues of feeling. But hy this it is not meant 
: : ii^ply either that one can be virtuous in any other manner or 
degree with the use of one so-called faculty only; or that the 
essential characterises :: any particular virtue do not require 
the co-operation of all the so-called faculties. Indeed, a so- 
called u faculty-theory " of the mind cannot be held in any such 
way as to make their separate action possible, not to say virtu- 
It is simple matter of fact, however, that some of those 
personal characteristics which the race has, with a practically 
uniform consent, regarded as morally approbated and merito- 
rious, emphasize self -control ; others emphasize qualities of 
judgment; still others emphasize the kindly feelings, or quali- 
;irs of the heart, rather than of the intellect or wilL This 
historical fact does something more than merely assist in the 
work of classifying the virtues. It plainly indicates what is the 
"essence" of virtue, — the Tlrtuousness which makes virTuous 
all the virtues. And this is the problem which philosophy 
aims to solve. 

The principal virtues of the WID, the virtues that emphasise 
self-control, are Courage, Temperance, and Constancy. "Cour- 
age is self-control in the presence of any form of temptation 
to fear; it is strength of purpose resisting the impulse to yield 
: iDwardice. Temperance is self-control in the presence of 
every impulse to gratification of the appetites and desires: it 
is strength of purpose to resist the seductions of the pleasure- 
giving and pleasure-promising activities. Constancy is per- 
sistence in self-control in spite of resistance or obstacles to be 
overcome; it is strength of purpose triumphing over all im- 
pulses to turn aside from the chosen course of conduct, from 
the repeated if even laborious use of means to reach the desired 
end. The vices or faults opposed to these virtues are cowardice, 
licentiousness or profligacy, and fickleness or sloth." He who 
has these virtues in large measure is a man to be admired 



318 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

from the ethical point of view as a man of " good will," in the 
more appropriate but restricted meaning of the term. For he 
is the man who has the will of a self-determining spirit; and 
be he Satan or Michael, so far forth, he both naturally and 
rationally calls for ethical and gesthetical admiration. Of such 
stuif are heroes made. It is such a brave, enduring, and loyal 
mind, whom savages admire and of whom the cultured poet 
sings : 

"Languor is not in your heart, 
Weakness is not in your word, 
Weariness not on your brow." 

In all emergencies, in all stages and conditions of civilization, 
he is the man of the hour. And these are virtues, none the less 
fundamental and indispensable, if less openly and ferociously 
displayed, at the present time. 

The principal virtues of the Judgment are Wisdom, Just- 
ness, and Trueness. In order that the term " virtues of the 
judgment" may be appropriately and usefully employed, these 
psychological truths which concern its nature must be kept in 
mind. Judging is no passive getting together of ideas, whether 
memory-images or products of phantasy, under the laws of 
association. Judging is a species of conduct. I judge; and 
therefore I am, in some sort, responsible for my judgment. 
Since the part which judgment takes in the virtuous life, is 
essential and integral, the truly good man must be a man of 
good judgment. When judgment applies to matters of con- 
duct, either in deciding whether they should be, or should not 
be, from the moral point of view, or whether, having been, they 
should or should not be approbated and " rewarded accord- 
ingly " ; then the word " good," as applied to judgment, has 
something more than a merely logical significance. 

Wisdom is opposed to that frivolity of which Humboldt said 
that it " undermines all morality and permits no deep thought 
or pure feeling to germinate; in a frivolous soul nothing can 



THE MORALLY GOOD 319 

emanate from principle, and sacrifice and self-conquest are out 
of the question." The most important respects in which that 
moral exercise of the judgment which is called the virtue of 
wisdom takes place are the following: (1) the estimate of 
ends, with a view to determine their relative worth; (2) the 
estimate of means, with a view to determine their relative 
effectiveness for the realization of ends; and (3) the appre- 
ciation of those limitations which belong to the natural and 
social environment of man. The supreme exhibition of the 
virtue of wisdom is, therefore, given when those ends are chosen 
which have the highest value as measured by the standard of 
the moral ideal; and when such means are adopted as are best 
worthy and most effective toward reaching these ideal ends, 
under the actual limitations, physical and social, of human life. 
Erom this virtue flow all the prudential virtues, but especially 
that most difficult form of wisdom for heroic and aspiring souls, 
— the virtue of Eesignation when human wills come into col- 
lision with the Will of Nature in the large. 

Of all human virtues, Justness is perhaps most difficult and 
at the same time highly prized by an enlightened moral con- 
sciousness as developed in social relations. The way that this 
ethical exercise of judgment spreads over every form of con- 
duct under social conditions led Aristotle to distinguish a 
kind of " general justice " which included the essence of all 
virtuousness. Of justice so defined he says : " It is complete 
virtue, although not complete in an absolute sense, but in rela- 
tion to one's neighbor." This " is not a part of virtue but 
the whole of virtue." Perfect justice, however, is not possible 
in a society composed of members of limited knowledge with 
respect to each others' character and deserts; and with both 
limited knowledge and power so far as the environment and the 
consequences of conduct are concerned. By this virtue, then, 
we can only understand the " voluntary judgment which ap- 
portions to men their due share of the goods and evils of life, 
so far as this is dependent upon human conduct/' 



320 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

It has already been indicated that, as there is a higher wis- 
dom, so there is a higher justness. This higher justness judges 
the customs and laws of society themselves and condemns or 
approves them in accordance with its own ideals. In its prac- 
tice the good man can do no more than cherish the spirit of 
fairness and a high estimate of the worth of the individual 
man; inform himself as to the means by which the existing 
inequalities of conditions as related to deserts may best be 
improved; and fuse these elements of justness into judgment, 
whenever any of the many concrete questions come before the 
bar of his moral reason for adjustment. For as Plato long ago 
taught, the attempt to deal with life's labors and acquisitions 
in a way to correspond with an ideal, concerns " not the outward 
man but the inward, which is the true Self and concernment of 
a man " (Republic, 443). 

Trueness, by which is to be understood something far more 
than mere truth-telling — the being true, in conduct and char- 
acter — may be esteemed the one indispensable condition of all 
virtuousness, the core of all right and dutiful character. This 
virtue might be called " loyalty to reality," or fidelity, as 
well. Yet the extreme views of the relativity and evolutionary 
character of all the virtues have selected this one, with an un- 
common delight, as proof obvious and positive of their conten- 
tions. For do not lies abound amongst all races that are low 
in the scale of civilization; and does it not require the experi- 
ences of a sort of mercantile profit to make truthfulness es- 
teemed as a virtue at all? Now it is true that this virtue, on 
account of those physical and social conditions which prevail 
in all forms of civilization, and especially in the lower and 
lowest forms, is particularly difficult both of appreciation at 
its true value, and also of habitual practice. But this is not 
because truthfulness is not esteemed a virtue by men gener- 
ally. Savages agree with Aristotle: "Falsehood is in-itself 
base and censurable; truth is noble and laudable." 

" The liar is short-lived/' says the Arabian proverb. " Lies, 



THE MORALLY GOOD 321 

though many, will be caught by Truth," is the rude Wolof's 
way of expressing the general experience. The natives of 
Afghanistan and of India may be nearly all liars ; but " the 
career of falsehood is short " — so runs the maxim of the former ; 
and truthfulness and courage are essential to the good man, 
according to the doctrine of the Eig Veda. Even the base 
Iago called the world " monstrous/' in which " to be direct 
and honest is not safe." And in an age and country like our 
own, where deceit and lying, born of avarice, cowardice, and 
political ambition, are so wide-spreading; trueness, in the 
higher meaning of the word, is esteemed one of the most un- 
qualified of the virtues. The conclusion which is justified 
by the philosophy of conduct, when guided by reflection upon 
the data of man's moral development, is this: He has most 
perfectly the virtue of trueness who most painstakingly and 
sincerely adjusts his judgment to the realities that have most of 
value in the relation to the supreme ends of the virtuous life. 
And this requires not only the refusal to be influenced by 
cowardice, greed, love of notoriety, and other vices which are 
prolific breeders of lies, but also a firm resistance of the judg- 
ment to the influences of thoughtlessness, dogmatism, and par- 
tisanship. 

Those virtues which we have ventured to call Virtues of the 
Heart arise more spontaneously from the kindly feelings with 
which human nature is endowed, and which are as essentially 
natural and normal, and as indispensable even to the begin- 
nings of human society, as are any of the most imperative of 
the self-seeking and self-protective appetites and passions. The 
shallow view, which at one time prevailed, that human nature 
is essentially selfish and that even the most altruistic of the 
feelings and kindly of actions are only more subtle and con- 
cealed forms of egoism, may now be dismissed without further 
comment. Many forms of sympathy are specific with man, as 
they are with all the higher species of animals. In man's case 
they have the human and rational qualifications and applica- 



322 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

tions which belong to his entire life, whether regarded from 
within or from without. These virtues are, therefore, not lack- 
ing among savages and primitive men. Their characteristics 
in such cases are, however, derived from their limitations. 
"Primitive man," says Wundt (Ethics, I, p. 263f.), "can be 
sympathetic, helpful, even self-sacrificing, when his comrade is 
in danger: he is incapable of an action which will not benefit 
some one of his acquaintances, still more of conduct which does 
not aim to assist any individual whatever." The active well- 
wishing toward all men, with a consistent self-sacrifice in their 
behalf, "without regard to difference of class or race," is in- 
deed the highest form of this virtue. But it is only under the 
influences of religion that mankind have in a measure risen 
to this moral judgment, and to a poor form of the practice 
recommended by such judgment. The Bhagavad Gita, and cer- 
tain writings of Buddhism, as well as of ancient philosophy, 
have indeed recognized and to some degree cultivated this 
universal feeling of brotherly kindness. But the writer just 
quoted is essentially true to the facts of history when he 
affirms (Ethics, I, p. 291) : "Humanity in the highest sense 
was brought into the world by Christianity." And " humanity 
in this highest sense" is "the sacrifice of self for others with- 
out regard to difference of class or race." 

Such, in brief, is the character of the man whom the moral 
verdict of the race agrees to call " good." A man of self- 
control — courageous, temperate, constant; a man in judgment, 
wise, just, and loyal to truth; a man of large sympathies, of a 
kind and unselfish heart. But these are many virtues; and 
wherein does their unity consist? This is the manifoldness of 
the moral life; in what does the essential distinction between 
the goodness of these attributes of it, and the badness of their 
opposites, make itself known and appreciated at its true worth ? 
This search for an ethically unifying conception or principle 
is further complicated by such facts as the following: The 
very virtues seem to be called forth under diverse conditions; 



THE MORALLY GOOD 323 

so that at one time one of them, and at another time another 
of them, must be selected to afford the appropriate motive for 
the action which shall fit the circumstances in a morally ap- 
propriate way. Indeed, the most important and conspicuous 
of the virtues seem, of their very nature, driven into a con- 
flict with one another. How shall a man be always courageous 
and just, and yet always pitiful and kind? How shall he be 
wise and at the same time wholly loyal to what is true ? In this 
particular, concrete case, will it be more wise to be courageous 
and tell the truth, than to keep silence even when it is difficult 
not to recognize a certain degree of cowardice as a motive to 
silence ? In actually being good, in the real life which aims at 
the ideal of virtuousness, the solution of such differences of 
solicitation and conflicts of equally honorable motives, is a 
ceaseless trial. But the teleology, or practical final purpose, 
of moral experience is not difficult to discover. It is in the 
trial, and in overcoming its difficulties, and in solving its prob- 
lems, that moral culture essentially consists. The essence of 
being good, as a practical affair, consists in just this ceaseless 
striving to discover what particular virtue is called for, on each 
occasion; and in doing one's best to answer as promptly and 
fully as possible to the demand. 

In saying this, however, we have only proclaimed the truth, 
that a self-conscious and self-determined effort to realize a 
certain ideal is the essence of subjective morality. We have 
only suggested a clue to, but have not fully answered, the 
problem: What principle gives unity to virtue? In what does 
the virtuousness of all the virtues essentially consist? In 
considering this problem further — both as a question and its 
answer — the constitution of the highest and most productive 
forms of unification must be borne in mind. They are not 
after the type of that hypothetical, unchanging and rigid atom, 
which a now vanished chemical science combined in order to 
build the less real but more serviceable unities of particular 
things. Neither are they logically consistent, complete, and 



324 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ready-made systems of elements. They are rather the result- 
ants of many co-operating and conflicting forces, which act and 
react for the development of some form of life that aims at 
some kind of an ideal. They are growths, organisms; and the 
supreme example of a real unity is that achieved by the mind 
itself as a result of its own self-conscious and self-determining 
activity. A I make myself one Self by self-controlled thinking, 
feeling, and action according to a plan; so I make myself one 
virtuous Self by the persistent effort to conform thinking, feel- 
ing, and action, as species of conduct, to an ideal of conduct. 

" There are two forms, closely allied but by no means identi- 
cal, which have been taken by the customary attempts at unify- 
ing the particular virtues. Both of these are unsatisfactory in 
their method as well as in their result. One of them con- 
sists in selecting some single feature or aspect of conduct, and 
then identifying the virtuous or vicious quality of all conduct 
with the goodness or badness of this one feature or aspect. 
The other consists in selecting some one of the more important 
of the virtues, and then identifying with it the entire essential 
content of the virtuous life. Thus if one follows the trail of 
the first argument in one's search after the unity of virtue, one 
will discover the virtuousness of virtue to consist in either good 
external behavior, or in good motive, or in good intention. But 
if the second method of solving the problem be chosen, then it 
will be claimed that all the virtues are, in the last analysis and 
essentially considered, either wisdom, or justice, or benevolence, 
or some other one among them all. The first method of unify- 
ing the particular virtues results in a narrow and perverted 
notion of conduct, as conduct has already been described in ac- 
cordance with the opinions and practices of mankind. The 
second method results in so modifying and expanding the con- 
ception of some one of the particular virtues as that it loses all 
its concrete and valuable particularity in a vague and shadowy 
generalization as to the nature of virtue. The result in both 
cases is similar to that obtained by treating in similar 



THE MORALLY GOOD 325 

method the allied phenomena of man's religious life. Thus in 
answer to the question, What is religion? one may locate its 
' essence ' in feeling, or dogma, or behavior ; or one may at- 
tempt the answer by so manipulating some one religion as to 
include under it all ' true ' religions and exclude all other re- 
ligions on the ground of their being ' false.' " 

The one essential characteristic of virtue cannot be found 
in the character of the external behavior; the science of ethics 
cannot bring about a unification of the virtues under the con- 
ception of conformity to the customs and rules adopted and 
practiced by society. The appeal which all men frequently 
make, and which the best men make most frequently and per- 
emptorily, away from these customs and rules to something 
higher, more authoritative and more spiritual, shows that in 
fact the essential quality of morality is not, as Locke regarded 
it, the conformity of action to a rule. Neither is the word 
Motive, in any legitimate meaning, fitted to express all the 
characteristics essential to every form of virtue. In its proper 
significance, motive is any desire, impulse, or wish, which tends 
to induce a definite volition. Good motives, in the ethical 
meaning of the adjective, become then such impulses, desires, 
or wishes, as tend to induce the choice of good or virtuous 
action. But the extreme conclusion that the desire, or wish, 
to be perfectly virtuous is equivalent to being perfectly virtuous, 
is shocking to the moral judgment. Indeed, good motives that 
are not " backed up " and " put through " with a will that has 
courage and constancy are not infrequently characteristic of 
the most weak and morally unworthy personalities. And as 
Aristotle well said : " If the purpose is to be all it should be, 
both the calculation or the reasoning must be true, and the de- 
sire must be right" (Mcom. Ethics, YI, ii, 2). 

In view of these imperfections of the other terms, the word 
Intention has been chosen to summarize the virtuous qualities 
which belong in common to all the particular virtues. And 
since this word may easily be made to include more or less of 



326 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

consideration for the consequences of conduct, and of choice to 
realize in action the motives which are apprehended as morally 
worthy, good intention does indeed come nearer to suggest- 
ing that attitude toward life in which the virtuousness of the 
mind essentially consists. If under good intention it is meant 
to include the most perfect functioning of the Moral Self as 
self-controlled feeling, judging, and acting, in the interests of 
its Moral Ideal, good intention is clearly identical with the 
virtuousness of all the virtues. The man of perfectly good in- 
tentions would be so far as that particular man could be, the 
man of the perfect virtuous life. But this would only change 
titles without simplifying the subject. The forming of good 
intentions is, indeed, often the only way of virtue under the 
circumstances. There are, however, two rather important ob- 
jections to this magnifying of words. In the first place, the 
virtues of the feelings, or so-called heart excellences, seem to 
lose some of their characteristic moral beauty and sweetness 
with a loss of spontaneity. Simple kindness, sympathy that is 
not too much strained through a close-webbed net of moral 
criticism, cannot be wholly lacking to the completely virtuous 
Self. And, on the other hand, some of the virtues of the will, 
especially the virtue of constancy, do not seem reducible to good 
intentions, even when this phrase is most liberally interpreted. 
The effort to unify all the virtues by reducing them to one 
all-embracing or all-absorbing virtue, is even less successful 
from the point of view of the philosophy of conduct. As we 
have seen, Aristotle chose a kind of general justice for this 
purpose; but he did not press his doctrine to an extreme, and 
did not consider it as interfering with his theory that the real 
excellence of all the virtues consists in their lying in a mean 
between two extremes. Modern ethics has selected " benevo- 
lence " as the one essential and all-inclusive virtue. And join- 
ing itself to theology, ethics has tried to summarize all the 
virtues under such an expression as " The Law of Love and 
Love as a Law," etc. But the question recurs at once: Must 



THE MORALLY GOOD 327 

not this benevolence, or love, be wise, courageous, constant, — in 
order to have that " stability and substance " which, as Hegel 
declared, u constitute the key-note of character " ? To this 
question no satisfactory answer is given, or can be given, with- 
out bringing in again a number of fundamental conceptions 
which do not fuse well with the conception of benevolence as 
the sole inclusive virtue. Lotze, for example, becomes hopelessly 
confused and unintelligible in his treatment of the whole sub- 
ject. This usually clear thinker tells us that it is " not the 
effort after our own, but only that for the production of an- 
other's felicity, which is ethically meritorious; — and, accord- 
ingly, that the idea of benevolence must give us the sole su- 
preme principle of moral conduct.'' To this vague sentence it 
is sufficient to reply that if by felicity be meant happiness 
rather than moral character, then the effort to procure it for 
others is by no means always " ethically meritorious " ; but if 
felicity be used to include, and to exalt, the worth of moral 
character, then he who does not make an a effort after " it 
for himself, is the very opposite of " ethically meritorious." 
Expand and explain our terms as we may, we cannot escape the 
truth: The idea of rational measure is required as an added 
ethical qualification in connection with benevolence itself. This 
" rational measure " is the key to the virtue of wisdom which 
Plato exalted to the place of supremacy: while in the ethical 
theory of the Old Japan, benevolence, justice, and wisdom all 
yield the crown to the consummate virtue of Fidelity. 

In fine, the argument always seems to come circling round 
to the point of starting again. Benevolence is indeed an im- 
portant and cardinal virtue; but it is only one of the virtues, 
and it must itself be supplemented and completed by the others, 
by constancy, wisdom, justness and trueness — if ethics is to 
depict in its perfection the Virtuous Life. 

This circle in the argument, however, has its own most im- 
portant suggestion to make. The suggestion is this: the stu- 
dent of the philosophy of conduct should concentrate his regard 



328 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

upon the one conception corresponding to that unitary being 
about which the circle has been drawn. This is the being of the 
Moral Self. It is the conception of such a being in which we 
must find the true principle for the unification of all the 
virtues. The unity of the virtues corresponds to the unity of 
a personality, in active and varied relations with other persons. 
This is a unity of no mechanical or merely conceptual sort; 
it is neither like the unity of a piece of mechanism nor like the 
unity which the process of logical abstraction prepares in order 
to cover an entire species consisting of many individuals. One 
sheep is like another, although one may be white and another 
black, one with long wool and one with short. But wisdom is 
not like courage, temperance is not a species of kindness, and 
justness and trueness are not to be reduced to benevolence. This 
many-sided being called man is the virtuous or vicious one; 
his possible virtues and vices are as many as are the forms of 
his action that are subject to intelligent control. He is set in 
society as the encitement and environment of his moral develop- 
ment; and his social relations are as indefinite in number as 
they are variable in kind. 

In all these varying relations, and on all these many sides, 
the Moral Self is seeking many different forms of good, and is 
trying to escape or bravely to endure many different forms of 
evil. In all this search and effort the individual man is only 
one of many, a unit in a larger social multiplicity, which is 
itself a sort of unit relatively to other higher unities. No one 
virtuous quality will suffice on all occasions, or for the satis- 
factory discharge of all the functions belonging to these differ- 
ing relations ; nor can any man, however wise, always tell which 
one of several virtues it is fitting to display. 

" One unifying conception of great significance and power has, 
however, already been attained. All the discoverable virtues 
are partial harmonies, or single notes accordant with the Moral 
Ideal. And that ideal is a Self living the Virtuous Life in 
social relations with other selves. The effort to realize this 



THE MORALLY GOOD 329 

ideal furnishes to each one in a fragmentary way his bit of the 
principle of unification which; so far as it is adopted and ap- 
plied, tends to hring his own inner life, at any rate, into the 
unity of a harmonious whole. The alleged unity of virtue thus 
becomes the fidelity of the one and total personality — the uni- 
tary being called a Moral Self — to the Moral Ideal. But this 
unity is subjective and lies in the nature of moral personality 
rather than in the nature of virtue — as though ' Virtue ' 
could represent anything more than an abstraction from char- 
acteristic tendencies and conscious states of a self-conscious 
and self -determining person. For any further objective ground 
of unity we must look, not to the nature of virtue, but to the 
nature of the Universe in the midst of which the development 
of human morality takes place.'' 

There are two other aspects of human ethical experience 
which have become embodied in abstract terms that seem to 
give morality a kind of unitary, but impersonal character. 
These words are Duty and Law. Is not he the truly good 
man who always does his duty; and may not, therefore, the 
doing of duty be said to be the very essence of morality? Or, 
what more can perfect goodness require of the man who aspires 
to attain it, than a constant and unswerving obedience to the 
moral law? But on examining both these highly abstract con- 
ceptions we find ourselves taken again over the same ground 
of facts that are only realized, or conceivable as possible of 
realization, through the development of a self-conscious and 
self-determining Self. Separate from personal experiences, 
duty and law have, in Reality, no ethical meaning at all. 

The significance of the word Duty is made clear by reference 
to these two sets of factors which are obvious and important 
in the development of the Moral Self: (1) that conduct is an 
obligation; and (2) that all obligation attaches itself of neces- 
sity to one person in varied social relations to other persons. 
Thus certain species of conduct, including the inner motives, 
intentions, and fixed purposes, since they are enforced by the 



330 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

feeling of obligation, are regarded as dues, or debts, to others. 
It is right that they should be performed; and this Tightness, 
as dictated and enforced by moral emotion, becomes the basis 
for a doctrine of duties and of rights. But there are duties 
many and diverse and difficult to discern; as many as there 
are other persons with whom the individual comes into social 
relations; as diverse as are these social relations; and as diffi- 
cult as human temptations, human ignorance, or human lim- 
itations of means and opportunity can make them to be. The 
conception of duty, therefore, is an abstraction from that feel- 
ing of oughtness which accompanies all man's judgments and 
actions of an ethico-social character. When, then, Kant apos- 
trophizes the conception : " Duty ! Thou sublime and mighty 
name"; or Coleridge, Carlyle, and others who write about 
ethical subjects with appropriate emotional warmth, indulge 
themselves in similar figures of speech; it is really the perfectly 
dutiful person, if such could be found, whom they make the 
object of their admiration and their worship. As Kant him- 
self elsewhere puts the truth in plain language; all men natu- 
rally ascribe a certain " dignity and sublimity to the person 
who fulfils all his duties." For the reality of such a life is 
glorified by the ideal to which it corresponds. 

The manner in which the word Law becomes in matters of 
morality, converted into a sort of adorable fetish, is even more 
obvious. This use of the word is after the fashion so prevalent 
among the physical and natural sciences of the day. Having 
discovered, as they suppose, the unchanging natures and in- 
variable modes of the behavior of things, and being able to give 
them an approximately accurate mathematical statement so 
far only as their quantitative relations are concerned, they 
proceed to personify and deify the formula. Obedience to the 
" laws of nature " seems to impart a dignity even to material 
substances which they could not have, if they were only con- 
sidered as just naturally doing what they chose to do. But 
" laws of nature " are not entities, or compelling forces which 



THE MORALLY GOOD 331 

exist over and above, or outside of, real things. So entrancing 
does the conception of law become, and so shadowy and inef- 
fective the conception of a consciously followed ideal, that the 
heart of science aches to reduce the Moral Self to a thing-like 
existence, under the reign of inexorable law. But this will not 
do. For in fact, it is not the' law that rules over the Self; 
it is the Self that makes its own law by following, or refusing 
to follow, the moral ideal. And this ideal is not the bare 
keeping of an impersonal law. The good man is not the man 
who is " reigned over " from the outside. The good man is he 
who makes the ideal of a perfect Self, living in those relations 
with other selves which are fixed by his physical and social 
environment, the effectively controlling thing in all his con- 
duct. And when the two laws — the vital impulses of appetite, 
passion, affection, desire, ambition, etc., and the mild but 
superior satisfactions of the idea — contend within him, his 
self-conscious, self-determining mind chooses the latter of the 
two. 

How, then, shall this manner of speech be taken out of the 
realm of poetry and myth and given the garb of scientific 
truth? It seems to us that only one way is possible. The ideal 
of duty-doing, which is a mere abstraction until it is trans- 
lated into terms of personal experience and personal char- 
acter, is really the ideal of a Moral Self who is perfectly ad- 
justed, by his own response to the feeling of obligation, to 
all other moral selves in the various social relations of human 
life. What, then, is the whole duty of man? It is the con- 
stant, courageous, wise, and loving devotion of one's powers to 
the realization of this Ideal. Positively expressed in terms 
of religion, the exhortation which sets before man his whole 
duty is this : " Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father 
which is in heaven is perfect." Negatively expressed, and as 
contradicting all the impulses, endeavors, and ideals which 
lie in different directions, human ethical experience may be 
summed up in these closing words of Tourgueneff's " Faust " : 



332 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

" Not the fulfillment of cherished dreams and aspirations, how- 
ever lofty they may be — the fulfillment of duty, that is what 
must be the care of man. Without laying on himself chains, 
the iron chains of duty, he cannot reach without a fall the end 
of his career. But in youth we think — the freer the better, 
the farther one will get. Youth may be excused for think- 
ing so, but it is shameful to delude one's self when the stern 
face of truth has looked one in the eyes at last." 

Closely connected with the conception of duty as an obli- 
gation upon impulse which is felt like "iron chains" is the 
conception of moral law in its origin and development. On 
this subject the analysis of moral consciousness confirms what 
an historical study of moral development suggests: only at a 
certain stage in his progress does man (the individual and — 
in a somewhat figurative way we may say — the race) find 
himself face to face with this legal conception of morality. 
It is indeed doubtful whether any distinct epoch in ethical 
evolution is to be discerned " when the idea of obligation 
held in the general consciousness has been taken by the obli- 
gatory norm of law." The rise and growth of the thought 
that the pursuit of the Virtuous Life may properly be con- 
ceived of as obedience to a universal code has been natural and 
yet manifold in character, and oftentimes subtle and chiefly 
concealed. Especially is this true of that exceedingly vague and 
intangible conception which undertakes to express itself in 
such phrases as "a moral law," or " the Moral Law." Laws, 
themselves impersonal, which are concrete enactments regulat- 
ing the relations of persons, and which owe their origin to the 
action of persons, can be understood. Laws that have only 
the significance of the more or less regular observed modes of 
the behavior of impersonal things, are prima facie intelligible; 
even if we cannot understand their source. But what can be 
meant by the Moral Law, if all personality, all Selfhood, is 
to be left out of the account which ethics attempts to render 
of its origin, its validity, and the enforcement of its penalties ? 



THE MORALLY GOOD 333 

In their effort to understand the origin and nature of such 
a mental construction as the conception of an impersonal moral 
law, writers on ethics are found shifting their points of view 
in the fashion against which warning has been already repeat- 
edly uttered. That is to say, these writers take at one mo- 
ment the subjective, or plainly personal point of view; and 
at the next moment they are found stationed at the more ob- 
jective and tentatively impersonal point of view. We say 
a tentatively impersonal " ; for no point of view from which 
to regard any ethical conception can possibly be more than 
apparently and momentarily (for the sake of the argument, 
as it were) separated from considerations that are realizable 
only in the conditions and. social relations of moral and per- 
sonal beings. 

Subjectively regarded, the conception of Moral Law is the 
conscious apprehension of a definite rule or maxim, adapted to 
regulate conduct, which actually excites some person's feel- 
ings of obligation, approbation, and merit, and which actually 
offers a mandate to some person's will. Subjectively consid- 
ered, also, the very formation of this conception implies a 
work of learning such rules or maxims from other persons; 
or of generalizing them for one's self by processes of observa- 
tion. The primary data for the formation of such a law are 
the facts which have already been discovered by our analysis 
of man's moral consciousness ; they are the " I think," " I 
feel," " I desire," " I plan," etc., — all of them psychoses, 
which have reference to forms of good and bad conduct. Ob- 
jectively regarded, however, the so-called moral laws are cer- 
tain forms of conduct that have — by whatever historical proc- 
esses and in accordance with whatever true or false traditions 
— become actually embodied in customs, maxims, statutes, or 
other institutions; they are the commonly accepted formulas 
which assume the right to regulate human behavior under a 
great variety of conditions and relations. But such Jaws, thus 
objectively and impersonally regarded, cannot be considered 



334 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

as truly moral laws, without a return to the personal and sub- 
jective point of view. And here the simple and ultimate fact 
is that they appear before the individual consciousness as 
binding; they actually arouse the feeling of obligation, and 
offer a mandate, an imperative to the will. Their being at 
all, that is to say, consists in the recognition which they ob- 
tain in the minds of personal beings. 

Moral laws imply, then, law-giving moral consciousness, 
which is their only actual and, indeed, only conceivable, source. 
So much of universality as they can attain is dependent upon 
those characteristics of moral consciousness which belong to 
human nature and are exercised semper, ubique, et db omni- 
bus. So much of objectivity as they possess, of impersonality 
as they appear to have, is due to the conditions and nature 
of the various forms of social organization. But social or- 
ganization is itself a product of morally constituted selves. 
In all such social organization the primary, universally present 
fact is found to be this: certain ways of behavior rather than 
others are actually recognized as binding upon human nature. 
As far back as one can go in human history, trusting in genu- 
ine historical sources, one finds society of some sort already 
organized upon substantially the same ethical basis as that 
now existing. The person makes the laws that take on the 
objective form of custom, maxim, common law, or written 
statutes; and the person responds to these objective forms with 
the feelings, thoughts, and volitions, which make them to be, 
in reality moral laws. The conception of an impersonal Law 
is, therefore, a pure fiction in ethics. 

We may note, in closing this chapter, how the conceptions 
of Virtue, Duty, and Moral Law, stand related in the moral 
consciousness of mankind, in many interesting ways. Virtue 
is a generalization from particular virtues, or kinds of con- 
duct to which, as due chiefly to moral reactions of the social 
environment, the feelings of obligation, approbation, and 
merit have become attached. Duty is a generalization from 



THE MORALLY GOOD 335 

concrete particular duties, each one of which implies the same 
feelings as connected with forms of conduct dependent upon 
our special relations with others (an " oweness " of some- 
thing to be done to some person). Law is a generalization 
of the maturer consciousness of the individual in his race 
development and more extended social environment. It is 
two-sided, and implies validity (" thatness ") and content 
(" whatness ") ; — an imperative which has reference to some 
external authority, although existing as a mandate within the 
human mind. 



CHAPTER XVI 

SCHOOLS OF ETHICS 

Thus far our discussions have established the truth that 
the reality of morality is to be found in the actual life and 
development of moral beings in social relations. These beings 
are self-conscious and self-determining minds; but in order 
to become true moral selves, they must be something more. 
And this they are. For in fact man, as human and really 
man, everywhere and in all times of his history, has attributed 
both a practical and an ideal value to certain kinds of con- 
duct. Nor has this preference been a matter simply of cool 
and unimpassioned judgment; it has been encited and en- 
forced by certain distinctively ethical emotions. And when 
the question is asked: What are those inner qualities and 
the deeds flowing from them, which are estimated as having 
moral value and so obligatory, and as worthy of approval and 
so well-deserving? an answer is given with a fairly unani- 
mous verdict from the race in its doctrine of the Virtuous 
Life. This doctrine reveals the truth that the essence of the 
virtuousness of the virtues consists in their conformity to a 
personal ideal. It is this Ideal which has value in-itself (or, 
so it appears at first sight) ; and as having such value it re- 
ceives the sanctions of moral consciousness. The Moral Ideal, 
progressively realized in fact by the moral development of the 
race, is thus the explanatory conception discovered by philo- 
sophical reflection upon the data of ethics. Moral Selfhood 
is a development from the self-conscious, self-determining ef- 
fort to realize the Moral Ideal. 

But man as moral, and as realizing an ideal because he is 
moral, is still a child of nature. This nature which he is self- 
developing has been derived from that larger Nature which 

336 



SCHOOLS OF ETHICS 337 

begat, encompasses, and supports him. What, then, has man's 
moral nature to tell us with regard to this larger Nature? 
How can the sanctions which man appreciates and estimates 
to be of such worth, and the ideal which he deems himself 
obligated to follow, be grounded in the Being of the World? 

Before we examine critically, the answers to this problem 
which have been attempted by the different schools of ethics, 
another obvious fact of man's ethical history must be called 
to mind. There has been a universalizing of moral judg- 
ments going on, as an important factor in the moral develop- 
ment of the race. The views held by savage and more primi- 
tive peoples as to the right and wrong of conduct and char- 
acter are not so essentially different in the nature of the esti- 
mate, as in the range of their application. Even Aristotle 
thought there could be no talk of justice, or of friendly feel- 
ing, as obligatory on the part of masters toward their slaves; 
since " the slave is a living tool, and the tool is a lifeless slave." 
It was Christianity, with its conception of common citizen- 
ship in the heavenly kingdom, which first regarded the man 
as now "no longer a servant, but above a servant, a brother 
beloved." 

Two classes of influences have been most important and 
effective in this process of expanding the limits within which 
the virtuous life is thought to be applicable, until no excep- 
tions are to be allowed for any member of the human race. 
These influences are, first, the economic, political, and social 
forces which have given rise to their respective forms of 
organizations and institutions, into which many different in- 
dividuals, families, ranks, and even races and nations, have 
been incorporated. Great mercantile and trading companies; 
great empires; great associations of an educational, or re- 
forming, or actively religious character; — all these make 
constant and important contributions to the universalizing of 
moral principles. But the influences of philosophy and of 
religious doctrine have been no less important and effective. 



338 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

Indeed, the moral ideals of the great philosophical and re- 
ligions teachers of mankind, have furnished the mightiest 
moral nplifts to the hnman race. Philosophy has labored to 
commend morality to the collective reason of mankind. Its 
work has been the universalizing of moral principles through 
the practical necessity of establishing a rational connection 
between particular forms of conduct and these universal prin- 
ciples. But religion, while its moral doctrines have been on 
the whole much less rational and less fit to command the intelli- 
gent judgment of mankind, and while the moral practices of 
its organizations have often been of a low and even degraded 
type, has on the whole contributed powerfully in the same 
direction of an increased range to the application of moral 
ideals. Muhammadanism, for example, has bound all ranks 
and conditions of many races, under the bonds of one form of 
moral obligation, in an efficient kind of brotherhood. But 
above all, especially in its more modern form of doctrine and 
work, which is a return to the principles advocated by Jesus, 
Christianity is striving to bring about an extension of the 
same principles of life and conduct to the entire race of man- 
kind. 

This practical " universalizing " of moral principles has 
both supported, and in its turn been helped by, the different 
theories which have endeavored to solve the final problems of 
ethics. For according as the moral nature of humanity mani- 
fests itself, and testifies, as it were, to its own final purpose 
and goal, in this enlarged social way; so the necessity is 
made greater for some rational account of its own origin, 
sanctions, and ideals. From this necessity come the various 
schools of ethics. These schools, in spite of many minor di- 
vergences and differences in the combination of their more or 
less important factors, may, in principle, be reduced to three. 
We will call them: (1) Legalism in Ethics; (2) Utilitarian- 
ism in Ethics; (3) Idealism in Ethics. 

As a final theory designed to account for the origin, sane- 



SCHOOLS OF ETHICS 339 

tions, and ideals, of man's moral life and moral development, 
legalism proposes the impersonal conception of Law. The 
theory may take one of two rather essentially different forms. 
The first of these nses the word in the same majestic but 
really unmeaning fashion which is so common with the shal- 
lower thinkers in the metaphysics of the physical sciences. 
The refutation of this form of legalism in ethics has already 
been indicated. Briefly reviewed, it may be stated somewhat 
as follows : All the facts of ethics, as we know them, are really 
subjective and personal. They are moments in the life of a 
self-conscious and self-determining Self, as limited by a cer- 
tain physical environment, and socially related to other like- 
minded selves. But this form of legalism summarizes the 
external imponents, hypostasizes them under the inapplicable 
term Law, and offers this abstract conception as the real 
explanation of the whole experience. It amounts only to 
saying "that mankind, in its moral evolution, has some- 
how embodied in its social organizations certain ways of 
behavior, and types of character, which actually excite the 
feelings of obligation and approbation; and which, there- 
fore, appear to have a right to command the will, with the 
majority of the individuals forming these social organiza- 
tions." The criteria, sanctions, and ideals of conduct are 
in this way left, just where they ought to be left by all 
historical and descriptive ethics, — namely, in the conscious 
life of the multitude of individuals that respond to the stimu- 
lus of external condition with the appropriate ethical feelings 
and ideas. Nothing is learned in this way, however, as to 
how the source, the rational justification, the profounder sig- 
nificance or final purpose, of this experience of mankind, must 
be conceived of in relation to the Universe of which man is a 
part. All dynamic elements are lacking to such a metaphysics 
of morality. In the name of social laws, the theory deceives 
us with empty abstractions, — mere generalizations that neglect 
altogether the moral point of view. 



340 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

" The case is somewhat different with the other form of 
Legalism in Ethics. This theory asserts that the moral law 
is revealed in human consciousness, and in such manner as to 
be independent of any form of historical or experimental proof. 
The Moral Law has thus the force — so the theory maintains 
— of an unquestioned rational principle; whose peculiarity, 
however, consists in this, that it does not simply offer a state- 
ment of truth which has demonstrable and universal certainty, 
but that it also makes upon the will a demand for obedience 
which is equally exempted from all questions of human scepti- 
cism. The moral law is, on account of the fact that its 
origin is purely in reason and without any admixture of 
empirical elements, both an apodeictic proposition and a cate- 
gorical imperative." 

That we cannot speak of any one all-inclusive and complete 
moral law, any proposition that shall summarize all the essen- 
tial judgments of mankind with respect to ethical values and 
all the maxims esteemed right for realizing these values in a 
virtuous life, has already been demonstrated in sufficient de- 
tail. The very nature of ethical judgment, the plainly 
heterogeneous character of the moral code accepted by the best 
judges, the actual course of man's ethical evolution, show that 
this conception of an intuitive all-embracing moral principle, 
as set into the original constitution of human reason, or even 
as having evolved itself in the progressive formation of human 
reason, is a chimera. Even more unwarrantable have those 
attempts been found to be which disregard the personal in- 
fluences and interests involved in all moral values; and which 
repeat the vain proposal to free the mind from its natural, 
necessary, and rational tendency, to consider all these values 
as rendered unthinkable and wholly without value as soon as 
they are treated from the point of view of impersonal laws 
and impersonal ends. 

Our contention against the possibility of an a priori im- 
personal law as offering a solution of the more difficult prob- 



SCHOOLS OF ETHICS 341 

lems of the philosophy of conduct may fitly be illustrated by 
a few words of criticism of Kant's attempt in this direction. 
In his profoundly philosophical mind the inevitable connec- 
tion between ethics, on the one hand, and epistemology and 
metaphysics, on the other hand, is obvious and impressive 
from the very first. To found more securely the principles of 
conduct and the postulates and faiths of religion was his pur- 
pose from the beginning of his critical examination of human 
reason. Kant's criticism of so-called " pure reason," or man's 
cognitive faculties so far as they are native and constitutional, 
leaves these faculties embarrassed and thwarted wholly, when- 
ever the attempt is made to extend knowledge beyond the 
confines of phenomena. Within these confines the same facul- 
ties operate to give to all kinds of experience, both constitu- 
tive and regulative forms that are themselves quite independ- 
ent of experience. And when Kant comes to treat of the 
moral ideas, he demands for them, too, an origin that is not 
empirical, but wholly supersensuous ; in this respect he re- 
mains true to the presuppositions of the Platonic ethics. But 
he is forced into the position where the very moral worth of 
every right action consists in its being done against resistance. 
Nothing but a bare law, unrelated to experience and arising 
in a world quite apart from the one which we know, is left 
of the essence of morality. This abstract formula, thus de- 
rived by a critique of man's moral consciousness and inde- 
pendently of all empirical data, is called by Kant the " Funda- 
mental Law of the Pure Practical Eeason." And it is stated 
by him, in the chief one of its slightly different forms, as fol- 
lows : " Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the 
same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation." 
Further examination of this Law, to which Kant gives a 
perfectly unquestioned authority and an absolutely universal 
applicability, and which he conceives of as a mandate of reason 
entirely free from all considerations as to the consequences 
of conduct and as to the feelings with which men unavoidably 



342 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

contemplate these consequences, shows that it is neither a 
priori, in any strict meaning of the term, nor properly speak- 
ing, impersonal. Indeed, whatever this law has which com- 
mends itself to the human feelings of obligation, or to the 
reasonable judgment of man, is dependent upon a vast and vari- 
able evolution of human experience; and all this experience 
consists of forms of intercourse between persons, and of read- 
justments in opinions and practices due to such intercourse. 
That is to say, all the validity which the so-called a priori and 
impersonal formula possesses comes from centuries of the use 
of human powers of reflection upon ethical and social phe- 
nomena. 

There is much, however, in this lofty maintaining of the 
claims of universal reason to have somewhere hidden in its 
depths the eternal truths and unchanging principles of all 
morality, which excites the enthusiasm and commands the re- 
spect of the reflective mind. The most unchanging truths, 
we feel, are moral. The profoundest insights into the heart 
of Eeality are born of the ethical nature. Man's kinship with 
the Infinite and the Eternal is most intimate and strong, only 
when he has arrived at the maturity of a moral self-conscious- 
ness. Things may be in an unceasing flux, and all the physical 
structures of human skill may crumble away. Even the ele- 
ments may melt with fervent heat, and the heavens themselves 
be rolled up like a parchment scroll: but the obligations of 
duty can never be abated; the good of righteous living does 
not fade with time; the moral ideal loses none of its awful 
beauty or of its unconditioned value. Over and beyond the 
last fading vision of the things that minister to a sensuous 
good, there rises the spiritual vision of a good that is lasting 
and supreme. And in this Good, virtue is not the least but 
rather the most important factor; for it is the ideal which lures 
on and encourages and commands the moral development of 
mankind. 

Thus the philosopher who is justly enamored of his own 



SCHOOLS OF ETHICS 343 

rational construction has always felt and spoken regarding his 
Ideal of the morally Good. That profound stirring of feeling 
which Kant designates " respect for the law " is itself a fact ; 
and so is also the movement of imagination and thought which 
accompanies the feeling. These facts are the experiences not 
to be doubted, of a moral nature that is — 



" Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain 
The good beyond him, — which attempt is growth." 

It is the source, the significance, the value, the warrant, and 
the outcome, of the nature thus formed, and the relation which 
it sustains to the larger Nature, which offer to the philosophy 
of conduct its ultimate problems. These problems, which 
utilitarianism in ethics almost totally disregards, are not in- 
deed solved by legalism in ethics; although the latter theory 
emphasizes and reinforces them as the former theory does 
not. 

According to the Kantian form of legalism in ethics, the 
criteria, sanctions, and ideals of morality are placed by Nature 
in every human being, ready-made as it were, in the form of 
a perfectly intelligible and infallible, but impersonal mandate, 
— " a principle of universal legislation." According to Utili- 
tarianism in its more modern and elaborate form, nature 
begets morality in a quite different and more roundabout and 
irresponsible way. The older form of Hedonism was frankly 
and consistently, even brutally, selfish; it made pleasure, as 
estimated by the subject of it, the sole test, justification, and 
final purpose, or end, of good conduct. The Stoicism which 
went to the length of scorning all kinds of pleasure, for pleas- 
ure's sake, and of seeming to cherish pain as a good in-itself, 
was the extreme answer to this Hedonistic extreme. Neither 
view could afford a satisfactory account of the data of ethics, 
the facts of man's moral experiences; and neither enabled the 
inquiring reason satisfactorily to connect the nature of the 



344 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

human Moral Self with that larger Nature in which it must 
somehow find its explanation and its ground. The forms of 
Hedonism prevalent in modern times has striven to guard 
against the objections, and to supply the deficiencies, of its 
predecessor, by introducing two important modifying concep- 
tions. Of these, one is the conception of evolution; the other 
is the conception of qualitative differences, implying degrees of 
excellence, in the various pleasures and pains to which man's 
sensitive nature is subject. 

Helped out by these two modifying conceptions, utilitarian- 
ism, with many minor modifications and divergences among its 
own most distinguished advocates, has agreed substantially in 
giving the following account of the origin, nature, and devel- 
opment of the Moral Self and of the customs and maxims ac- 
cepted, as duly ethical, by a society of moral selves. First, we 
have to reckon with the obvious fact that the animal man, like 
all animal organisms, is sensitive to a great variety of influ- 
ences. On account of the fact that he stands at the head of 
the evolution, hitherto accomplished, of animal species, he is 
the most sensitive of the many such beings of which we have 
knowledge. He is above all other things capable of reacting 
to his environment, both physical and social, with a countless 
variety of indefinite degrees of pleasures and of pains. To say 
that he craves pleasure and dislikes pain is a mere tautology. 
The attractiveness of pleasure, the repulsive power of pain, 
are essential and vital elements in the pleasure-pain experi- 
ences. But the way that man reacts — that is, his own be- 
havior or conduct — determines in large measure the quality of 
his experiences, whether pleasurable or painful; and, as well, 
the intensities and varieties of both his pleasures and his pains. 
Nor is this relation of cause and effect limited to the individual 
acting; it extends usually, if not quite invariably, beyond 
the limits of his own self-hood and affects the pleasure- 
pains of other selves. These effects upon others, whether pleas- 
urable or painful to them, may also be either pleasurable or 



SCHOOLS OF ETHICS 345 

painful to the actor himself. For he, let us admit, has been 
already so far developed by nature, in the animal series, that 
he is superior to all the other animals, in his sensitiveness and 
multiform capacity for sympathetic pleasures and sympathetic 
pains. 

What, now, inevitably results from this growing experience 
of the sensitive nature of man with the consequences of his 
conduct, as impressed upon him by nature, through the forces 
of his physical and social environment, in the form of egoistic 
or sympathetic pleasures and pains? To this question one of 
two answers may be given in the name of evolution; or both 
of the two answers may be combined. Some forms of bad 
conduct are destructive of the life, or the virility, of the in- 
dividual and of society; and even of its power to propagate 
itself in a prolific way or to nourish itself and maintain the 
struggle for existence against opposing forces. The opposites 
of these forms of bad conduct will, of necessity survive and 
become preferred by men's consciousness through their en- 
forced selection in the realm of so-called nature. Morally 
good conduct is, therefore, when viewed from this point of 
view, conduct which fits men to survive in their struggle for 
existence with natural forces and with other men in their social 
environment. Thus — in part at least — the morality which we 
have seen can belong only to the life and development of 
a self-conscious and self-determining Mind, existing in social 
relations with others of like mind, is explained as arising 
out of the unconscious and externally determined adaptations 
of the animal man to the conditions of his existence. Of 
course, as the human race multiplies and comes into more 
varied and close relations of an economic, political, intellectual, 
and social sort, what has been called the universalizing of moral 
principles is compelled more or less promptly to take place. 

Does the same theory account also for the " internalizing " 
of moral judgments? This important fact in man's ethical 
history is by no means so easily explained by combining the 



346 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

doctrine of evolution with the fundamental principle of utili- 
tarianism. The human mind may be compelled by an inexora- 
ble nature to recognize, at first unconsciously and then with 
more or less of intelligence, that certain forms of conduct are 
preferable if success is to be attained in the struggle for ex- 
istence; and this recognition would afterward cause it to attach 
a value to these forms because they are found useful for the 
purposes of this struggle. Mankind might even, by the ex- 
tension of the sphere of sympathetic feeling, manage to cross 
part way over the bridge between the obvious fact that " all 
men want to be happy " and the moral obligation a to want 
all men to be happy ■"; although this is hard to admit. But 
it still remains to show that the essential quality of virtuous- 
ness is recognized by moral consciousness as its utility for 
the production of happiness; and yet further, to explain how 
it has come about that this consciousness estimates the internal 
qualities of the Self as having a moral excellence of their own, 
quite irrespective of the question whether they give pleasure 
to their possessor, and not wholly, or even chiefly, dependent 
upon their merely pleasure-pain consequences to his fellow 
men. 

In a word, when an answer is sought for the ultimate grounds 
of moral principles, the various considerations brought forward 
by the most subtle and complex forms of utilitarianism are 
far from satisfactory. The help which evolution gives to the 
explanation is only superficial. The principle of evolution can 
say, at most, only that somehow, because of an experience of 
their pleasure-producing power, certain activities of the Moral 
Self have come to be preferred; and that certain others are 
discredited, because of their lack of this power — so long as 
the principle of evolution remains strictly faithful to the 
principle of utilitarianism. But when the latter endeavors to 
help out the former, by turning its descriptive history into 
really explanatory science, it departs from its own essential 
point of view. Then, in fact, Utilitarianism in Ethics be- 



SCHOOLS OF ETHICS 347 

comes something more than merely utilitarian. For virtue 
is given another kind of excellence, essentially different from 
its usefulness to the securing of pleasure and the avoiding of 
pain ; and the " Moral Self " is seen to be something essentially 
higher than a sensitive and intellectually gifted animal. Thus 
the Xature which has produced such a natural being is called 
upon to show further reason to justify its ability for so noble 
a work, and for its interest in the realization of such an in- 
comparable ideal. 

Some of the more conclusive objections to every form of 
Utilitarianism in Ethics — that is to say, the theory which at- 
tempts to explain the criteria, sanctions, and ideals of the 
Moral Self as arising wholly from the relative utility of differ- 
ent forms of conduct to produce pleasure, or avoid pain — may 
be briefly summarized as follows: And, first, the psychology 
of man's pleasure-pains which is necessary to this theory is not 
true to the facts of experience. In speaking of pleasures and 
pains we are dealing, not with entities that can be externally 
measured or estimated, but only with subjective processes, the 
estimate of whose intensity and value is also a purely sub- 
jective affair. If A gets more pleasure (and therefore prefers 
it on hedonistic grounds) from swilling beer than from reading 
poetry or visiting the sick, or subscribing to the missionary 
cause, this is simply an indisputable fact; so far as the two 
persons are governing their conduct merely by pleasure-seek- 
ing, there is no difference in motive between the two. Nor is 
the moral character in general the chief determining factor in 
men's experiences of pleasure and pain. Until the painful 
struggles of life have worked out for the few souls who attain 
it, that consummate virtue of resignation, and its ensuing 
peace, the conditions of happiness, so far as they reside in the 
individual, are much more physiological and temperamental 
than ethical and spiritual. " Given freedom from disease, 
and a slain antelope, and there could be no merrier creature 
than a Bushman." Apart from the consolations of religion, 



348 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

there is no small ground for the contention of Schopenhauer, 
that intellectual and moral refinements breed pains much faster 
than pleasures. But the whole utilitarian theory breaks down 
with the load of repairs which its upper story has to bear when 
the invention of John Stuart Mill is accepted and moved in; 
for this acute analyst of human moral consciousness detects 
and admits the fact that the self-conscious and self-determining 
mind does make distinctions between higher and lower pleasures, 
and between noble and ignoble pleasures; and that it does even 
prefer certain noble forms of suffering to certain ignoble forms 
of happiness. But the moment that this truth has been recog- 
nized, a new standard of estimates has been set up over the 
different pleasures and pains. This new standard is a standard 
of moral values. 

Utilitarianism in Ethics is also disproved by its complete 
failure to make good its promise of affording some definite 
and scientific principle by which to estimate the relative values 
of different kinds of conduct and types of character. Its 
vague general statements about the quantity of pleasures and 
pains, happiness and misery, which flow from various ways 
of living and moral growth, are far enough from an exact 
science. For utilitarianism must be held, in its application, 
strictly accountable for an answer to these three questions: 
(1) Whose happiness furnishes the criterion, sanction, and 
rational ideal of morality? (2) When is this happiness to 
be conceived of as realizable, in order that it may afford the 
desired criterion, sanction, and ideal? (3) What is the nature 
of the happiness that stands in such an essential relation to 
morality? And it must answer these questions in such a way 
as (1) to furnish a criterion for distinguishing between the 
morally good and the morally bad, in behavior and in char- 
acter; (2) to account for the sanctions on which the actual 
moral judgments of mankind rely in justifying the feelings 
of responsibility, and of moral approbation and disapprobation, 
together with the right and the duty of treatment appropriate 



SCHOOLS OF ETHICS 349 

to the moral character; and (3) it must explain the nature 
and development of the moral ideal. 

If now it be said that whatever form of pleasure or happiness 
(for the real issue of the argument is not changed by an 
interchange of these words) is preferred by the individual, 
taking his own life only into the account, precisely that, and no 
other form of pleasure or happiness ought to serve him as 
the criterion and the ideal of his own conduct; and that this 
preference is itself the sufficient justification of such conduct; 
this is as near as a strict doctrine of utilitarianism can come 
to giving a manageable rule of life. I know what gives me 
most happiness; and although I cannot calculate with much 
approach to scientific accuracy, the sum-total of my kind of 
preferred happiness during my whole life, I can come nearer 
to this than to the true answer for any other person, — much 
nearer, than for mankind in general. But to adopt such a 
criterion, such an ideal of the life to be preferred, is to go 
squarely athwart all the most cultivated feelings and judg- 
ments of the race with regard to the very nature and destiny 
of the Moral Self. It is, at best, to become in the opinion 
of mankind a calculating and, possibly, a refined voluptuary, 
but not a good man. All social development sets itself against 
the attempt to put into practice such a theory of the moral 
life; — and by no means least, the morally most perfect society. 
I must, then, take others into the account, — at least, some 
others — in adopting for myself, some principle to regulate 
conduct. I must, therefore, so govern my conduct as to secure 
the maximum of happiness for a portion of my fellows, with- 
out sacrificing unduly my own claims to happiness. Here 
again, however, I am at once met with the problem : Shall it 
be with those who prefer the things in which I find and antici- 
pate most pleasure; or shall it also be, in part, with those who 
have other standards of pleasure? In case I am sensuous, 
must my moral union be with epicures and prostitutes; in case 
I am of intellectual or artistic tastes, with scholars and artists, 



350 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

etc.? But in any case, utilitarianism requires that the Moral 
Self shall be controlled in all its moral purposes and relations 
by its ideas as to how to get, and to give, the most of its own 
particular, preferred kind of happiness. The world beyond 
may go its own way and utilize its conduct to the end of se- 
curing its own preferred kind of happiness. 

No doubt a certain amount of this selfish sort of self-classi- 
fying in the pursuit of social enjoyment is generally held to 
be ethically justifiable. But we have undertaken to discover 
the essential characteristics of the virtuous life — in such form 
that the discovery shall explain and justify the feeling of ob- 
ligation which Nature has fastened on the race, and the ideal 
of moral goodness which It has slowly, but now clearly, lifted 
above the horizon so as to make this ideal a matter of self- 
conscious appreciation and self-determining choice and en- 
deavor, for the race. 

The further expansion of the theory of utilitarianism, which 
the growth of moral consciousness in the race demands, results 
in a complete bursting of its bands. The man who thinks to 
be moral by associating himself in a calculating way with 
those of like mind and tastes with himself, as to how to get 
the most pleasure out of life, finds himself, as judged by the 
highest standards, far below the mark of the moral ideal. In 
the first place, he has no sufficient sanction for those heroic 
and self-sacrificing virtues which are particularly admired by 
the moral judgment of mankind. In the second place, his in- 
terests are narrow, and the virtuous deeds called out by them 
are lacking in breadth and depth. But — more fatal still to 
the theory— unless he is seeking by his conduct to promote 
the true and the highest happiness of others, as well as of 
himself, he is not really dutiful to the sanctions, or working 
toward the ideal, of morality at all. As we have already shown, 
however, the moment you scale your pleasures or happinesses so 
as to make some of them true and others false or deceptive, 
some intrinsically high and others base, you have abandoned 



SCHOOLS OF ETHICS 351 

the utilitarian standard ; but you have found the more excellent 
way. You have admitted that the values of a life which is 
struggling to attain the moral ideal, while relying upon the 
sanctions of moral consciousness to justify its reason in this 
struggle, are too excellent — or excellent in another way — to be 
expressed by such terms as denote only degrees of pleasure or 
happiness. You may change your word to welfare, if you 
choose. For it is not happiness, or pleasure, as such {quoad 
happiness) which imparts the sanction to the realization of 
virtue in this kind of a moral life; neither is it the maximum 
of happiness for all, in-itself considered, which constitutes its 
moral ideal. To be virtuous, even at the cost of suffering made 
inevitable by the physical and social environment and, so far 
as we can see, essential to the very process of moral develop- 
ment, is welfare for the Moral Self. Morality cannot be made 
the mere servant of happiness, not to say, its tool. Moral 
goodness, as a qualification of moral self-hood, has life and 
worth, incomparable, in itself. 

When it extends its claims over all generations and tribes 
of human beings, and even beyond, into the invisible regions 
of hypothetical selves or future disembodied spirits, utili- 
tarianism becomes yet more hopelessly bewildered in its argu- 
ment. What sanction the religious devotee or patriotic martyr 
can establish in reason for his feeling of obligation to sacrifice 
himself in behalf of the future realization of a Divine King- 
dom, or to help gain some centuries of a prosperous Common- 
wealth, from the obligation to seek happiness, if such an ob- 
ligation exists at all as a moral affair, it is impossible to 
explain. 

Finally, to return to an earlier point of view, utilitarianism 
does not help the theory of moral development to explain how 
morality arose out of the non-moral ; how the obligation bravely 
and self-sacrificingly to face pain in the interests of an ethical 
ideal sprang from a natural craving for pleasure and a natural 
shrinking from pain. And here we come upon a point at which 



352 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

the views of evolution and of utilitarianism seem to be not 
only divergent but even contradictory. Nowhere else is it so 
clear as in the moral sphere that the desired end cannot be 
realized, or even approached, except by paying the cost in im- 
mense suffering all along the way. Courage, temperance, con- 
stancy, wisdom, justice, fidelity, and kindness, are virtues quite 
inconceivable in a world free from temptations, suffering, loss. 
Indeed, such is the essential nature of the Moral Self that it 
cannot come into being at all except by way of a process which 
is one long-continued painful struggle. 

The refusal to regard morality as having either its criterion, 
its sanctions, or its ideal, in happiness merely, has been so 
complete in the world's best literature that one scarcely need 
cite examples to show its truth. Dramatists, poets, biographers, 
and historians, who have taken the ethical point of view, as 
well as the surer insight of the highest class of modern novel- 
ists, have refused to depict or to estimate the values of human 
life in terms merely of pleasure and pain, of happiness and 
suffering. The necessary discipline of pain, and the moral 
worthiness of disregarding the purely hedonistic standard have 
so impressed the minds of the poets generally as to evoke many 
passages like that one often quoted from Browning's Eabbi 
Ben Ezra: 

" Then welcome each rebuff that turns earth's smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! 
Be our joys three parts pain, 
Strive, and hold cheap the strain; 
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe." 

We cannot, therefore, accept the claim of Utilitarianism in 
Ethics that the criterion, the sanctions, and the rational end 
of conduct are all to be found wholly in the relation which 
conduct sustains to human happiness. Conduct is, in fact, a 
function productive of happiness or unhappiness; this is one 
truth of experience. But men call conduct good or bad, — ■ 



SQHOOLS OF ETHICS 353 

meaning by these terms to designate the characteristics :f 
conduct in relation to another ideal standard than that of 
happiness. This is another truth of experience. These two 
truths cannot be united in the theory that conduct is to be 
considered, from the ethical point of view, solely as a function 
productive of happiness or unhappiness: that the rationality 
of the demand made upon moral consciousness for right con- 
duct is based solely upon the value of its eudaenionistic tendency : 
and, finally, that the end at -which moral self-culture aims is 
solely the end of auaining happiness. 

To review the problem of conduct as it now comes before 
us for solution : We are seeking for some rational account for 
the origin and gTounds of that quality of u Tightness "" which 
men attribute to some conduct in preference to other : induct 
We are seeking not so much to explain the facts of particular 
preferences, but to disc-over a universal basis which our rational 
nature may approve for the fact of this hind of a preference. 
In the course of the search, the admission has been forced 
from the advocates of the hedonistic theory that men do not 
actually regard the preference of morally right conduct as 
identical with the choice of the course which c e e te s to bring 
to the individual the maximum of mere happiness. The ad- 
mission has also been forced that men do not regard themselves 
as obligated merely to seek happiness for themselves, nor lo 
they claim the sanctions of conscience for seeking happiness, 
in the same way as for the effort to do right, and for the 
striving after the realization of the moral ideal. The admis- 
sion has also been forced that in the practical reason of man- 
kind, the ideal of happiness and the ideal of a Moral Self 
functioning perfectly so far as its own conduit is concerned, 
in social relations to other selves, are not absolutely identical 
ideals. What more is needed to constitute the admission that 
the criterion, the sanctions, and the ideal end of conduct, as 
regarded from the point of view of ethics, are not to be 
found in happiness alone? 



354 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

It must be admitted, however, that the considerations which 
the modern theory of evolution has brought to bear upon the 
older forms of Hedonism are important; and that their ad- 
mission into the theory produces certain improvements in the 
current forms of Utilitarianism in Ethics. So far as the 
theory of evolution is applied to the explanation of the changes 
that have gone on in the moral consciousness of the race toward 
different customs and practices, it throws a flood of light upon 
ethical phenomena. Undoubtedly, the experience both of the 
individual and of the race with the pleasurable or painful con- 
sequences of the current customs and practices is always 
changing — and often profoundly or even completely changing 
— the moral attitude of the community toward these customs 
and practices. The typical morality is uniformly, to a large 
extent, the construction of the physical and social forces that 
enter into the total evolution of human life; and hedonistic 
considerations are, of course, powerful amongst these forces. 
But they are by no means the whole of the forces which shape 
the moral evolution of mankind; and the history of this 
evolution itself shows that they are not. It is necessary again 
to remind ourselves of that fallacy to which the advocate of 
the theory of evolution in ethics is constantly tempted, — the 
fallacy, namely, of identifying a partial and defective history 
of moral development with a complete and satisfactory account 
of its underlying causes and its fundamental principles. 

After making the necessary restrictions and explanations 
there are few real reasons left for the present close alliance 
between utilitarianism and evolutionary ethics. The just claims 
of both, as based upon facts of experience and upon fair con- 
clusions from those facts, can be better admitted and incor- 
porated into a satisfactory ethical theory, if this alliance is 
severed. Those complicated and distinctive forms of activity 
which make man a moral being cannot, strictly speaking, be 
explained as evolved from any less complex and more vaguely 
animal forms of functioning. His moral endowment being 



SCHOOLS OF ETHICS 355 

once assumed, however, the various modifications which it un- 
dergoes are explicable — theoretically at least — in terms of the 
theory of evolution. On the other hand, the important part 
which man's susceptibility to an increasing variety of pleasures 
and pains plays in his ethical development cannot, of course, 
be denied; nor should it ever for a moment be lost sight of 
by the student of the philosophy of conduct. 

Indeed, it is to these considerations, which admit the value 
of happiness and yet deny that happiness is the sole criterion, 
sanction, and ideal end of morality, that we must attribute 
the unsettled condition in which psychology and history leave 
the student of ethics. But utilitarianism offers no delivery 
from these painful dilemmas. On the contrary it widens the 
gulf, intensifies the strife, and perpetuates the schism, between 
the Sentient Self and the Moral Self. It tends to make 
a hopelessly divided manhood. For the same self-conscious and 
self-determining being cannot, under existing circumstances, 
pursue both happiness and fidelity to the moral ideal as its 
supreme end in life. No amount and no subtlety of intellect, 
when employed in calculating amounts, kinds, and ideal values 
of happiness merely, can so equip human nature as to fit it 
for, or conduct it toward, a rational and morally worthy 
end. We must look, then, to some other form of theory for 
help in the further solution of the most profound problems of 
ethics. 

The answer which Idealism feels compelled to give to the 
ultimate problem of ethics is, therefore, unmistakable. It 
accepts all the truths to which legalism and utilitarianism 
make their appeal. The Kantian form of legalism is grandly 
right in holding that the moral ideal is bedded in human 
nature in such manner as to be its own criterion, and sanc- 
tion; and that the worth of this ideal is absolute and not 
dependent upon the sensitiveness to pleasure-pains of the 
animal man, as shaped by his physical and social environment. 
But utilitarianism, joined with the theory of evolution, is 



356 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

also right in connecting man's moral being and moral de- 
velopment in a causal way with the Being and Evolution of 
the Universe as known by man. The truths of both these 
theories must, therefore, be incorporated into the conception 
of this Universe as being ethical in its own nature and — so 
to say — " its own right." Unless man's moral ideals are really 
to have their ground, their sanction, and their final purpose, in 
the Being of the World, they are merely subjective, without 
rational ground, or sanction, and without sure promise of a 
satisfying end. That Nature, in which the physical sciences 
do not hesitate to find the self-like characteristics of order, 
of force directed toward appreciable and intelligible results, 
of obedience to so-called laws, and of other forms of rationality ; 
that Nature, in which the biological sciences discover the 
sources, the selective and directive energies, the mysterious 
qualitative changes that result in the formation of species after 
species according to different types; that Nature, whose latest 
offspring is the human Self, with its self-conscious and self- 
determining mind; — that same Nature must stand sponsor for 
this same offspring's moral endowment and moral development. 
The criteria, sanctions, and ideal of ethics, must have their 
ultimate source and final warrant in the World-Ground. 

It must be confessed that there is something mystical and 
not easily to be demonstrated by an offhand appeal to human 
experience in this belief of Idealism that the World is itself 
moral at the core. There are, indeed, many things done by 
Nature which are exceedingly trying to this faith — if faith it 
is to be called. In view of some of the most natural procedures 
one is tempted to call the " Mother " of men wholly non-moral, 
or most cruelly and persistently immoral, when judged by hu- 
manity's highest standard of what comports with its moral ideal. 
Even the devout and resigned religious believer is compelled 
to abjure the arrogance of a claim to justify all the divine 
procedure by admitting that " His ways are not as our ways." 
And yet the orthodox theological conception of God is, in im- 



SCHOOLS OF ETHICS 357 

portant respects, singularly like the orthodox scientific con- 
ception of Nature. 

We are not, however, just now engaged in trying to prove 
the perfect goodness of the Divine Being. Our present claim 
is one which calls for less of faith; and which admits of more 
of evidence from the particular sciences, as well as, especially, 
from the moral consciousness itself. The claim is simply this: 
The non-moral cannot produce from itself the truly moral life 
and moral development. A collection of beings, having unity 
enough to be called a World, or a System of Nature, or a 
Universe — what you will — that can develop a race of self- 
conscious and self-determining beings, who feel the sanctions, 
observe the criteria, and seek the ideal, of an ethically right 
social status, must have in itself the sufficient explanation of 
this unparalleled and glorious achievement. 

The conclusion just drawn is, of course, speculative; but it 
is not purely speculative, if by " purely " be meant a speculation 
without basis in historical experience. The declaration of 
Matthew Arnold was not an exaggeration. He found proofs 
in history of a " Power-not-ourselves that makes for righteous- 
ness." If the physical and biological sciences are allowed to 
use their own terminology, without being called too strictly to 
account for a liberal interpretation, they have no objection to 
speaking of the benevolence of Nature's laws and of the wis- 
dom with which she secures improved results by seemingly 
severe, but really on the whole kindly, methods of procedure. 
Now benevolence and wisdom are qualities of Selfhood in ac- 
tion, and not of impersonal laws or formulas. Physiology, 
medicine, and Irygiene, are always declaiming about the re- 
wards of virtuous living, not only or chiefly to the good man 
himself, but to his children, to his children's children, and to 
his neighbor's. Economists and moralists have no doubt that 
Nature, including above all the social manifestations, favors 
right conduct and, on the whole, " rewards accordingly " the 
conduct which is morally wrong. While there are no other 



358 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

so powerful and convincing preachers of the doctrine that 
righteousness exalts nations, as those who know the history of 
nations; or those true statesmen who are trying honestly and 
intelligently to guide national affairs. The particular ways 
in which the Being of the World manifests its ethical prefer- 
ences are, indeed, painfully slow, roundabout and hidden; but 
they seem, on the other hand, to be fairly well marked as to 
their intention and reasonably sure, if given time enough to 
work through to the end the forces which are executing its 
Will. The ancient Greeks, who were excelled by the Hebrews 
in the practical recognition of a God of righteousness as the 
Moral Ruler of man, themselves excelled all others of their 
own time in their reflective study of ethical principles. They 
admitted that " the mills of the gods " grind exceeding slow ; 
but they knew that these mills grind exceeding small. 

In computing the moral character of Nature, however, after 
having rejected the fallacies of both legalism and utilitarianism 
in ethics, it is obligatory' of idealism not to commit the same 
fallacies again. Nature is not to be convicted of immorality, 
because she has not endowed man all at once with a perfectly 
infallible law by which to read on tables of the mind his own 
particular duties, on all possible occasions; nor again, because 
she has not given him a complete insight into her own ethical 
character and ethical ideals. In all her many aspects, Nature 
is far too large to be quickly and readily comprehended by the 
human mind. If there is much which is puzzling, and even 
seemingly self-contradictory about her moral character, this is 
no other kind of puzzle than those which arise whenever her 
ways are studied from whatever point of view. When we re- 
jected the extravagant claims of the Kantian ethics, we sur- 
rendered our hope of finding anywhere an immediate intuition 
into the very depths of universal moral reason, as a ground for 
a confidence which admits no possibility of error, and which 
pays no tribute to a slow evolution of the criteria, sanctions, 
and ideals of morality. 



SCHOOLS OF ETHICS 359 

There is much more danger to idealism, however, from a 
temptation to return to some of the subtler fallacies of hedon- 
ism or utilitarianism in ethics. Certainly Xature has not pro- 
vided such an outfit or environment for either the individual 
or the race as to give it the maximum of conceivable happiness. 
Here again the Greeks were wise : for they declared u It is 
for tcils that the gods sell all gc od things to men." Happiness, 
independent of conduct and char cuter, would belong to a non- 
moral or positively immoral system of things and men. But 
the deeper truth lies in this discovery: Happiness, whether 
for the individual or for the rare, cannot furnish the sole 
criteria, sanctions, and ideal, of moral life and moral develop- 
ment. What vie are of making morality to be that, which it 
essentially is not, could Xanue give in order to establish in 
mams experience her own reputation for morality ? If Xature 
has the higher regard for the good of moral selfhood, and of a 
society conposed of selves who are striving for the realization 
of this good, rather than for the happiness of her children, 
she cannot conduct herself as though the moral criteria, sanc- 
tions, and ideals, were to be found in amounts merely of 
pleasures and pains. Otherwise, the moral philosopher might 
assume this cold attitude toward his Mother, and say: "I 
am holier than thou."' 

And, strangely enough, this is what virtually taxes place in 
human experience. For so dimly hue a 1 is the conviction that 
Nature is morally responsible for the way in which it treats 
man. as a control the thought and language of those who most 
stoutly refuse to credit all that is implied iu the inference. 
Beligicm iu it ; highest term, recommends reslguati:n to the 
will of God as accountable for the just and wise and loving 
distribution •:: the gcocls and evils of life. Iu its lowest forms, 
it is frankly dualistic: the evils of human life must be borne 
as coming from devils that reside iu natural things and forces, 
and are hard to propitiate. Bat agnosticism and atheism 
are most inconsistent and illogical at this point. They affirm 



360 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

in theory the totally impersonal and non-moral character of 
the system of things. And yet in practice, they are inclined 
to demand honorable and fair treatment from this impersonal 
and non-moral source. 

More than by any other argument, however, is the interest 
of Nature in man's moral development manifested by the 
conditions and laws which it has fixed for the existence and 
welfare of society. Every example of right conduct is, by its 
very nature, subjective and individual. It is some person's 
conduct; and as conduct, it is an affair of conscious feeling, 
judgment, and volition, considered in relation to an ideal. 
This ideal, too, is subjective and individual. It is the product 
of that same individual's judging and imagining activity. But 
in society the Eight appears also as objectified and universalized. 
For all men have, in order to constitute them moral and capable 
of living together under ethico-social relations, a certain con- 
stitutional equipment ; and certain common relations, like those 
of the family, the tribe, or some more complex social organiza- 
tion, belong to men everywhere and at all times. Therefore, 
the conduct of the individual is never his own affair solely. It 
has constantly to measure itself by this more objective and 
generally accepted standard ; and its ideal can never be achieved 
or even approached by those 

"Who trimmed in forms and visages of duty, 
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves." 

" Moreover, these two ideals — both the individual and sub- 
jective, and the objective and universal — are never framed 
in any approach to a complete independence of each other; 
nor can they be kept apart in their application to the theoretical 
solution of the problems of conduct, or in their effect upon the 
feelings and deeds which correspond to moral ideals. Not 
infrequently the two seem struggling together; the one to 
enforce laws and rules, and to realize in the social organization 



SCHOOLS OF ETHICS 361 

the conception of an eternal and absolute character for that 
which is esteemed right; the other to introduce exceptions and 
to break down existing laws and rules by an appeal to some 
superior interest or higher authority. 

i; It cannot be said, however, that the doubts and oppositions 
over the problems of conduct which characterize all human 
experience, and which especially characterize the epochs of 
rapid transition in customs and moral judgments, affect the 
fundamental Nature of the Eight. Xor can it be asserted that 
the antagonism, or even the two-foldness, which seems espe- 
cially to develope at these epochs, exists between the individual's 
ideal of his own self and the social ideal. For, in truth, 
the ultimate moral ideal is always necessarily social; it is in- 
variably conceived of by every idealistic theory, which has any 
claim to critical consideration, as including the moral good 
of one and of the many, of the individual and of the social 
organization. What precisely this ideal good may be, and 
how it is going to harmonize in particular cases, or in the 
final result, the interests both of the individual and of society, 
no one may be able to describe a priori. Certainly, no theory 
which confounds all morality with the prudential virtues can 
frame a solution for the problems presented by the conflicting 
interests of the individual and society. But so far as one 
attends strictly to the moral ideal, the difficulties and antag- 
onisms between the individual and society are of another 
order. 

u These difficulties and antagonisms seem to emerge in some- 
thing like the following way: On the one hand, it is plain 
that the more inclusive moral ideal is social; it is therefore 
adapted to control the particular ideal of the individuals com- 
posing society. But on the other hand, the social ideal itself 
is decidedly not the ideal of a social organization in which 
the customs, maxims, laws, and opinions, that are for the time 
being most popular and dominant, assert and enforce the right 
to control absolutely the individual in the pursuit of his own 



362 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

moral ideal. Such an association would not correspond to the 
ideal of a society of truly moral selves. Indeed, the civil and 
ecclesiastical organizations which have — no matter with what 
pretence of a good conscience, or with what show of reasonable 
grounds — endeavored so to dictate moral ideas and laws to 
their individual members have usually turned out most mis- 
chievous and abominable tyrannies. The present day proposals 
which are more subtle and indirect, whether of the more pro- 
nouncedly imperialistic or socialistic order, to force conformity 
to some common social ideal, when the moral self is not in- 
telligently committed to it as its very own ideal, will un- 
doubtedly prove just as unfavorable to a real moral develop- 
ment. The two most prominent existing and contending types 
of social organization — imperialism and socialism — are both 
characteristically immoral and fatally destructive to genuine 
morality. For, the moment you conceive of your social or- 
ganization as successfully framed after the pattern that com- 
mends itself to the ethical judgment, and that stirs moral 
feeling and the imagination in appreciation of its intrinsic 
excellence, you have rejected for the individual the supreme 
authority of the prevalent customs, maxims, laws, and opinions. 
"An ethically ideal society is, therefore, such that it can be 
constituted only of ideally good persons living together in social 
relations. But the good person is the moral Self who self- 
consciously and voluntarily shapes his conduct in conformity 
to his own ideal of what a Self ought to be. He is indeed 
deferential to society; he conforms oftentimes to its customs 
and laws, and oftentimes remains silent in the presence of its 
maxims and opinions, although they do not represent satisfac- 
torily the ideal which he has made his own. He is devoted to 
the best interests of society, as he understands these interests; 
for them he may wish to live, and on occasion be quite willing 
to die. But he can conscientiously do this, and so maintain 
in integrity his own moral selfhood, only in so far as his own 
moral reason will permit; and when the necessity arises, he 



SCHOOLS OF ETHICS 363 

appeals to something within himself, or above himself and above 
all men, for the warrant to disregard and even to transgress 
the standard of morality which society has made objective and 
generally accepted. It is such men as this who have ever been 
the uplifters and saviors of social morality. They have been 
the truest expressions and supreme developments of social 
morality as constituted by Nature." 

But it is under the influence of the sentiments and faiths of 
religion that this confidence in the correspondence, in character, 
between the World-Ground and the Ideal of morality has been 
strengthened and perfected. It is the religious consciousness 
which most unequivocally affirms the dictum of the philosopher 
Pichte : " The World-Order is in the last analysis a moral 
order." The cosmic processes which have combined to work 
out an evolution of moral ideals, as realized in the moral up- 
lift of human society, must be processes essentially controlled 
by ethical considerations. 

Undoubtedly, there are many human experiences which seem 
to conflict with the conclusion which we have just reached. 
Indeed, the conflict between the realities of human experience 
and the ideals constructed by human thought and imagination 
is the eternal conflict. According to the myths of the ancients 
and the theologies of modern times, this conflict was waged in 
invisible, supermundane regions before it began to be waged 
upon earth. The theoretical solution of the conflict, as re- 
spects its origin, its fullest significance, and its ultimate issue, 
is as satisfactorily treated as is compatible with the limitations 
of human knowledge, when it is shown how one may believe 
that the ultimate Source of both the reality and of the ideals 
which await realization is one and the same World-Ground. 
This World-Ground is a personal Will that is pledged and 
able to effect the progressive realization of the ideals which, too, 
owe their origin and historical development to It. In a word, 
the same Ethical Spirit who inspires the moral ideals of man, 
and who reveals its own Nature in their historical evolution, 



364 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

will secure, and is securing, the realization of the same ideals by 
this process of evolution. If one may have a reasonable faith 
in this conclusion; then certainly, however severe the temporary 
conflict may be, and whether this conflict be raging within the 
soul of the individual or within the social organization, its final 
issue and fuller significance are secure. Well-founded optimism 
makes large demands on religious faith. Only when one is 
confident that there is indeed a Power in human history, which 
is over and throughout it all, and which effectively makes for 
righteousness, can one hopefully survey the long-existing dis- 
proportion between the actual conditions of humanity and 
humanity's own highest moral ideals. 



CHAPTER XVII 

^STHETICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 

There is a certain attitude of mind with which, a selected 
class of objects is contemplated or reflected upon that resembles 
in important respects the moral consciousness, but is not iden- 
tical with it. To this may be given the title of the " aesthetical 
consciousness." And since it involves in no doubtful way the 
postulate of an ideal in more or less perfect control over the 
forms and relations of really existent beings, both Things and 
Selves, the nature and implicates of this kind of consciousness 
require treatment at the hands of philosophy, For here are 
subjective conditions and states which make a persisted and, 
on the whole, a gratefully accepted claim to tell to man the 
truth about the Nature of that Ultimate Eeality in which all 
particular existences have their origin, explanation, and ground. 
The confidence of humanity that Nature, by its processes, 
recognizes and realizes gesthetical ideas, is as well-founded in 
the processes of human reason, as are the laws and principles 
of the chemico-physical sciences. In other words, the senti- 
ments and judgments of the artistic development of the race 
may as truly teach us what the Being of the World really is, 
as the feelings and judgments of the race's scientific develop- 
ment. 

In any satisfactory study of the philosophy of the beautiful, 
whether in nature or in art, the foundations can be laid se- 
curely only by beginning with psychological analysis. We ask, 
then, first, this question: What, as a matter of experience, is 
the so-called aesthetical consciousness? The obvious prelimi- 
nary answer to this question can be no other than the following : 
This form, like every other form of the experience of the self- 

365 



366 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

conscious and self-determining mind, must have all the essen- 
tial elements of mental life and mental activity, blended in 
some particular manner. As sentiment, it is the feeling of the 
beautiful — the peculiar feeling inspired by objects that are 
judged beautiful (or its opposite). As judgment, it is a judg- 
ment about what is (or is not) beautiful. As realized in deeds 
of will, as practical, it is art, or the setting of the feeling and 
judgment of beauty into some concrete object. In saying this, 
however, nothing has been told as to the peculiar qualities of 
the kind of consciousness called sesthetical; but its psycholog- 
ical complexity has been recognized and emphasized. 

In the analysis of moral consciousness it was found that all 
its earlier developments are chiefly characterized by vague and 
unreasoned, though by no means irrational, forms of feeling; 
and that the moral judgments of mankind in their undeveloped 
form are scarcely more than affirmations of certain states of 
ethical feeling. It was also found that the selection of objects 
to which these feelings attach themselves is largely — indeed, 
at first, almost, if not quite, exclusively — determined for the 
individual by his physical and social environment. In the 
sphere of the beautiful the dominance of feeling is even greater 
than in the sphere of conduct. And the conditions of human 
social evolution afford a ready explanation of why this is neces- 
sarily true. Departure from the generally accepted opinions 
and practices with reference to what is good or bad from 
the artistic point of view, can be tolerated with complacency 
by the community; or if their expression is going to bring 
discomfort to the individual, they may usually be easily con- 
cealed by* the individual. The case is obviously not the same 
with regard to opinions and practices touching the good and 
bad of conduct. The difference is not, however, by any means 
absolute. For the suffering inflicted upon the individual who 
departs in any marked manner from the public taste in matters 
of dress or architecture, or furnishings, may be even more 
acute than are those of the man who violates some of the more 



^ISTHETICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 367 

firmly established customs and maxims which are understood 
to be worthy to control the conduct of everybody. It is espe- 
cially in matters of conduct themselves that the aesthetically 
correct and the morally right are often not distinguishable. 
Savages and half-civilized peoples enforce in cruelly rigorous 
fashion the feeling of obligation to conformity in matters which 
appear to us to be matters of mere taste. Communities which 
considered themselves highly civilized have tolerated and even 
approved of murder to avenge very slight breaches of etiquette 
in the treatment of an equal or a superior. While in the really 
most civilized countries of to-day, the laws are to a considerable 
extent devised so as to secure those forms of behavior which 
defer to the conventional notions of propriety, in affairs of so- 
cial intercourse which are essentially quite as much aesthetics! 
as they, are ethical. 

Three things should be noticed, however, about all this class 
of racial habits. First, the external form of conduct, — its pro- 
priety, or politeness — is no adventitious factor, but of the very 
essence of the conduct itself. Second, it is as conduct, and so 
as necessarily subject to moral feeling and judgment, that 
offences offered to aesthetical regulations are so sternly judged. 
And, third, after all, the sentiments and judgments of man- 
kind as to the right and wrong of conduct are more firmly and 
definitively fixed than are their sentiments and judgments 
respecting what is, or is not, in good taste from the more purely 
aesthetical point of view. When we come to what has been 
called the internalization of moral judgment, we discover a 
more marked difference between the two. For faulty sentiment 
and misplaced judgment on matters of art have never been 
regarded as having the same relation to the quality of the 
Moral Self as the lack of the virtues of courage, constancy, jus- 
tice, truth, and kindness. Yet, as will appear more clearly 
later on, the aesthetical and the moral development and per- 
fection of human nature are most intimately related. Art can- 
not be indifferent to morality. Morality cannot perfect itself 



368 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

in a complete indifference to artistic form. And, the ideals of 
ethics and of aesthetics blend in the One Ideal-Eeal whom re- 
ligions faith worships as God. 

Beginning, then, with the emotional factors of aesthetical 
consciousness, we note first their pronounced pleasnre-pain 
quality. This fact is scarcely expressed satisfactorily by say- 
ing that what is esteemed beautiful produces agreeable feelings ; 
and what is esteemed not-beautiful, or positively ugly, affects 
men with feelings that are more or less disagreeable. The truth 
of ordinary experience is rather to be expressed as follows: 
What produces in men a certain kind of agreeable feeling, that 
they judge to be really beautiful; what fails to produce this 
agreeable feeling, but does not produce its opposite, that they 
consider aesthetically indifferent ; and what produces in them 
the opposite disagreeable kind of feeling, that they judge to 
be ugly. 

Further examination of the emotions awakened by objects 
which are classified in terms derived from assthetical conscious- 
ness, shows them to share in the characteristics which are 
possessed in common by all human emotions; indeed, it might 
almost be said, by all animal forms of feeling. yEsthetical 
feelings have an obvious, and some of them have a strong, 
sensuous basis. They are bodily feelings — in part, but only in 
part. This sensuous basis is most pronounced in the case of 
those emotions with which the mind greets the sublime, the 
awful, the tragic, in nature; and the heroic, the mysterious, the 
tragic in human experience and human history. The physiologi- 
cal functions and psycho-physical factors called forth by the dif- 
ferent kinds of beautiful objects, are also themselves characteris- 
tically different in kind. The poses and movements of the body 
and the corresponding muscular and skin sensations, the breath- 
ing, the action of the heart, the visceral stirrings, all contribute 
to modify the forms of emotion which, in general, may be 
grouped under the term " aesthetical." And when the powerful 
influence of the principle of association — whether directly over 



^ESTHETICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 369 

these feelings or indirectly through the varied grouping of the 
memories and ideas evoked — is fully taken into the account, 
then one cannot fail to conclude that the corresponding dy- 
namic associations in the cerebral areas are the physical basis 
of the complex states of consciousness actually experienced. 
[More about the varieties of sesthetical emotion thus occasioned 
will be said further on.] 

iEsthetical emotions are seldom a perfect blend of wholly 
agreeable or wholly disagreeable feelings. There are indeed 
objects which are entrancingly beautiful, which wrap the soul 
away from all semblance of anything to mar the pure bliss of 
sesthetieal enjoyment. Eeligious intuition or faith produces 
such experiences; so do certain sights in nature, — as, for ex- 
ample, the Himalaya Mountains, or some poems, or musical 
compositions. But the latter, as well as all productions of 
human art, more rarely give an unmixed assthetical enjoyment. 
The artistically uncultivated soul is usually made uneasy 
through some mixture of bodily discomfort, or ungratified de- 
sire, in the midst of its happiness at viewing the beautiful in 
nature or in art. And every one knows how dissatisfied is the 
artist — the more so the greater and truer artist he is — with his 
own art. Where sesthetical judgment is cultivated, while the 
pleasures in the beautiful are refined and increased, the sensi- 
tiveness to flaws and imperfections may also be so much height- 
ened as to make a pure joy in beauty almost impossible. Thus 
most things, and most achievements of human character and 
human skill, when thoughtfully examined, awaken mixed feel- 
ings, partly pleasurable and partly tinged with pain. From 
the psychological point of view it is pertinent to ask: Why 
should not these feelings be subject to all the variations, de- 
grees of intensity, and mixtures, which characterize human 
emotional states of every other kind? 

The complex sentiments with which men respond to sesthet- 
ical impressions have, however, two classes of characters which 
distinguish them from all emotional disturbances of a merely 



370 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

sensuously agreeable or sensuously disagreeable quality. A 
certain universality and a certain rationality are — however 
vaguely and dimly — evinced in the way in which men look upon 
each other's sesthetical states. The suggestion from this is that, 
while sensuous tastes, appetencies, and preferences of an emo- 
tional character, relate to what " in-fact-is " ; genuinely ses- 
thetical tastes, appetencies, and preferences belong, the rather, 
in some sort to the sphere of " that-which-ought-to-be." You, 
for example, may like olives and I may like them not; or the 
liking of us both may be the other way. In either case, it is a 
mere fact to be explained on physiological grounds, or on the 
grounds of association of ideas. One man may get more enjoy- 
ment out of rag-time music or the ordinary vaudeville song; 
while another may enjoy and approve, as a matter of rational 
preference, a sonata of Beethoven or the Erl-King of Schubert. 
This preference, too, must be explained, so far as explanation 
is possible at all, as a result partly of difference in constitu- 
tions and, partly, of difference in habitual associations. But 
whoever of the two approves of the higher and nobler form of 
art, cannot fail to look upon the other either with a feeling 
of pity or of contempt for his inferiority as judged by a stand- 
ard which is rational, and which ought to be universally ac- 
cepted by rational beings. So that the cultivation of assthetical 
tastes is a matter of the improvement of the life of the spirit; 
and this profound truth even our public-school system is com- 
ing to recognize. The motto : " De gustibus non disputandum " 
is decidedly not true of sesthetical tastes. On the contrary, 
there are few other matters about which men think it more 
reasonable to argue than about the emotions and judgments 
with which things and deeds, beautiful or ugly, are to be ad- 
mired and approbated, or the opposite: It is not fitting for 
man, being rational, even to gratify his appetites or natural 
desires without any regard for aesthetical considerations. And 
whoever is wholly lacking in feeling for beautiful objects is 
almost, or quite, as deficient in an essential quality of man- 



^ISTHETICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 371 

hood as is lie who wholly lacks moral or religions feeling. In- 
deed, all three forms of sentiment, while neither one is abso- 
lutely identical with the other, are in the experience and de- 
velopment of the individual and of the race, indissolubly 
united. 

A second distinguishing characteristic of aesthetical senti- 
ment is its peculiar objectivity. Of course, every feeling of the 
beautiful is somebody's feeling; it is an emotional disturbance 
occurring in the conscious life of some subject. As such, it 
testifies unequivocably to a certain susceptibility to states which 
have pleasure-pain qualities. But it is also a kind of sentiment 
which is aroused as an apparent appreciation, of a rational 
and quasi-obligatory sort, of the qualities inherent in the object 
which calls it forth. These qualities are appreciated, in the 
way of feeling, as having value, or worth, belonging to them. 
In this respect the relation of the object to the feeling subject 
— of nature and art to you and to me, when we call their 
products beautiful — differs in an important way from either 
the relations of sense-perception or of ethical appreciation. 
But it resembles the latter much more than the former. The 
orange, for example, is perceived to be in fact sweet, yellow, 
round, large, heavy, etc. That is, this thing affects the mind 
through stimulating the organs of sense in particular ways, and 
arousing in consciousness the complex resultant of present sen- 
sations, images of past sensory impressions, automatic organic 
or quasi-intellectual processes, etc. For the mind it is good or 
bad, has worth or is worthless, according to its uses. But this 
same object may at the same time arouse in consciousness cer- 
tain feelings, to account for which, there is attributed to it 
either beauty or ugliness. This kind of impression, too, may in 
a measure depend upon changes in the subject's point of view; 
or in the utilitarian relations of the object as viewed from that 
point of view. Thus even a malignant tumor, or a loathsome 
reptile, may be beautiful as seen through the microscope of 
the student of clinical microscopy or of biology. And Rem- 



372 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

brandt's so-called " School of Anatomy " is one of the most 
artistically impressive of the works of pictorial art. But the 
moment the object is contemplated from the unselfish and 
purely aesthetical point of view, as a thing of beauty simply, it 
is recognized as somehow having its value, or worth, " in-itself" 
The expression of the subject's feeling toward it can be stated 
truthfully in no other way than to say : " It is beautiful." We 
should no more tell the truth about the way it really appears 
to us, if we should say, " The whole and the only important 
fact is that I am affected thus and so, rather than that the 
flower or the star is actually existent," than if we should say: 
"All there is of this experience is that I — A. B. — feel agree- 
ably or disagreeably impressed, without any reference to the 
qualities possessed by the object." 

Nor is the relation which the feeling subject sustains to the 
beautiful object precisely like that involved in moral appreciation 
and admiration (or their opposites). There is the worthy or un- 
worthy external object; and there is some condition, or perform- 
ance, of a self-conscious and self-determining subject with refer- 
ence to that object. If the condition, or the performance is 
subjective; the worthiness or unworthiness is also subjective. 
But no artist, on taking the purely sesthetical point of view, can 
reasonably regard his own product in a wholly subjective way. 
Tie may be proud or be ashamed of his achievement; this feeling, 
however, is not sesthetical, but personal, however true to the re- 
sult of his endeavor the feeling may be. But if the artist has 
really made a beautiful thing, he has contributed to it an ob- 
jective value, — a value which is now become quite independent 
of him. No matter who chiselled the statue, no matter who 
painted the picture, no matter who composed the symphony, no 
matter who wrote the poem; the one purely aesthetical question 
to be answered is this : " Is the object really beautiful, or not? " 

These truths regarding the intrinsic nature of sesthetical 
sentiments have been boldly stated, at the risk of serious mis- 
understanding. There is, of course, no use in denying the fact 



^ISTHETICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 373 

that environment, association, and education, are powerful in 
the development and control of these sentiments as they are in 
all human affairs. And that mere things, whether so-called 
natural or constructed by man, have no value, and no possibility 
of value " in-themselves," unless they share in that spiritual 
life which man knows himself to possess, and in the posses- 
sion of which he has the criterion and the key to all questions 
of value; — Why! this is the very conclusion we are trying to 
prove. 

On the other hand, the claim is justifiable that those feel- 
ings of humanity which have the characteristics of the assthet- 
ical sentiments — namely, the characteristics of objectivity and 
universality — bear a creditable witness to the nature of Eeality. 
They are not merely subjective states of the individual con- 
sciousness; mere matters-of-fact occurrence in a fortuitous suc- 
cession, called the " stream of consciousness." They are so 
connected with man's rationality, so influential in determining 
his cognitive attitude toward the world, as to be the revealers of 
essential truths. And of the sentiment of beaut} 7 , in particular, 
it may be claimed that it is a rational feeling which has its 
correlate in the constitution of things ; in that system of actual 
existences which we have so frequently summarized under the 
abstract general term, the " Being of the World." 

^Esthetical consciousness is, however, a matter of more or 
less intelligent and deliberate judgment. But the precise form 
which Eesthetical judgments take (it has already been said) 
rests even more upon a basis of unanalyzed feeling than is the 
case with the moral judgments. Ask the average man, for ex- 
ample, to explain why he considers this piece of conduct, or 
quality of spirit, — such as courage, justice, kindness — to be 
right, and its opposite wrong, and he will probably make shift 
to give you some kind of an answer. But ask the same man, 
why he considers this scene in nature, or this painting, or 
poem, or piece of music beautiful, and he is altogether likely 
to remain dumb or to prevaricate. In case he gives an honest 



374 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

answer, he will probably defer to some one else's judgment; 
or he will recite some agreeable experience of his own with 
which the beautiful object has become associated in thought. 
These, however, are not answers to the question : " Why is it, 
the object, really beautiful?" The unexplained fact of judg- 
ment is accordingly left just where it was before the process 
of searching for its grounds began. It is beautiful means: It 
awakens agreeable gesthetical feeling in me; and it seems to me 
that it ought to awaken the same kind of feeling in other 
minds. 

The nature of sesthetical judgment, and of the relations 
which such judgment sustains to gesthetical feeling, is made 
clearer by the fact of experience, that argument about the 
matter can only produce intellectual assent; but that argu- 
ment cannot, of itself, produce a genuine sesthetical apprecia- 
tion, whether in the form of sincere feeling or of intelligent 
and deliberate judgment. One mind can, indeed, point out to 
another the qualities of the beautiful object; and when these 
qualities are intuited or contemplated, they may excite the ap- 
propriate and genuine sesthetical feeling, and may thus become 
reasons for an intelligent and voluntary aesthetical judgment. 
But this is all that argument can do. The truth of these state- 
ments is enforced and illustrated by the methods which must 
be followed in order to gain or to impart a really sesthetical 
culture. The canons of the different arts may indeed be made 
matters of study. Perhaps they may be so laid down as to 
justify a claim on their part to constitute a sort of a science; 
and so far as they are science, they can, of course, be taught. 
These canons are, moreover, not simply rules for the produc- 
tion of art-objects; they are also rules for the appreciation of 
beautiful objects, whether natural or the products of the differ- 
ent arts. But learning these canons cannot make an artist ; in- 
deed, such learning has no tendency to make an artist. Even 
less does it, of itself, stir any mind to an appreciation of the 
beautiful in nature and in art. The most that such learning 



^ESTHETICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 375 

can do is to point out how, and where, one shonld look to find 
the several characteristics of the objectively beautiful, when it is 
presented to the mind for its appreciative intuition or con- 
templation. Only the object, that is in-itself beautiful, can 
arouse and win for itself a genuine aasthetical appreciation. 

In forming a judgment about matters of aesthetical concern- 
ment, but especially about the genuineness of the claims of 
any object to be considered really beautiful, the play of the 
imagination is confessedly the most important psychical factor. 
Beauty, both in nature and in art, appeals to the imagination. 
For its appreciation, in all its forms and in every kind of art, 
the imagination must be quickened; and for some kinds of the 
beautiful and some products of artistic skill, the work of the 
imagination must be greatly elevated and enlarged. This gen- 
eral statement is equally applicable to certain scientific facts, 
conceptions, and principles; they, too, require an awakening of 
the imagination, and a stretching of its wings beyond all that 
is common-place and ordinary, if the heights requisite for a 
true apperception and a dutiful appreciation are somehow to 
be reached. Indeed, the appreciations with which the discov- 
eries and speculations of a large part of modern science are 
greeted, are much more aesthetical than they are logical or 
mere matter-of-fact. It is not the facts which so-called science 
knows that so much stir the spirit : it is, the rather, much more 
what science imagines and asks the learner to make real for 
himself by corresponding activities and stretches of imagina- 
tion. All the appreciations of the vastness, the order, the mys- 
tery, the infinites, the infinitesimals, the achievements of the 
power and the skill, of so-called Nature, are aesthetical; and 
they, therefore, make boundless demands upon the imagination. 
If we were to take these aesthetical elements, and also the prac- 
tical applications and contributions to the welfare of mankind, 
out of physics and chemistry, and out of the other al- 
lied physical and natural sciences, the remainder would 
scarcely contain salt enough to preserve itself in the open, 



376 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

economic market of the world of human interests. For it is 
as an artist, and a lover of sublimity and of the other kinds of 
beauty, that the self-conscious and self -determining mind re- 
gards the Nature which constitutes its spiritual as well as 
physical environment. 

There are these important differences, however, between the 
more purely scientific and the more purely gesthetical activities 
of the human imagination. And, first: in the case of the 
latter, the existence of the object at all is dependent upon the 
constructive activity of imagination. At any rate, for science 
as well as for ordinary knowledge, the Thing is there: it is 
not dependent for its existence upon the image-making capac- 
ity of the knower. For although this capacity is implied in 
every act of sense-perception; so silent, automatic, and rela- 
tively unobtrusive is its work, that the becoming of this thing 
to the knower as Ms object, seems in no respect to depend 
upon his constructive imagination. The amoeba, the diatom, 
the white blood-corpuscle, under the microscope, really is what 
any most unimaginative observer may see that it is. But with 
the " Thing of Beauty/' the case is not so. The unimaginative 
person cannot see it as such a thing. The person who would 
see the object as beautiful must have aroused in himself, as 
subject, a species of sympathetic, constructive imagination. 
This is most patent in respect of all art-objects. They are, as 
beautiful, products of the artist's constructive imagination. If 
they are going to appear beautiful to another observer, this 
other observer must somehow reconstruct the object by a sympa- 
thetic activity of his own imagination. He must not simply 
observe ; he must appreciate. From the point of view of knowl- 
edge simply — whether ordinary, or scientific — the thing re- 
mains unchanged; but from the point of view of art, the 
thing has been called into life again, made real, by a spiritual 
power which works in correspondence to the same kind of 
spiritual power which imparted to the object its quality of 
beauty at the first. 



JESTHETICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 377 

And, second, when this difference on the part of imagina- 
tion in the two attitudes of the human mind/ is carried over 
into the fields of science and of art, respectively, we arrive at 
a larger and more comprehensive distinction. Science aims, 
primarily, at the attainment of truth; art aims at the produc- 
tion of beauty. The ideals of science are realized, as estimated 
by its peculiar standard of values, according as the facts and 
the relations of the facts, are more accurately stated, on the 
basis of their being more comprehensively and minutely known. 
The ideals of art are realized, as estimated by its peculiar 
standard of values, according as there are more beautiful 
things in the world, and a more feeling-full appreciation and 
saner judgments of their worth as beautiful. Yet neither in 
science nor in art can truth and beauty be divorced. For the 
ideal of truth itself makes a powerful appeal to aesthetical feel- 
ing. And who can doubt that if the truth were more com- 
pletely known, and faithfully applied to the art of living, by 
all men, there would be more of beauty, and of joy in beauty, 
among mankind? For who can doubt, on the other side, that 
if beauty were more appreciated, with an elevated and refined 
form of sentiment, and if the relations of life were regulated and 
estimated with a saner and more cultivated aesthetical judg- 
ment, men would know far more of that truth, which to know 
and practice sets men free. 

From the more comprehensive philosophical point of view we 
are compelled to notice that all human development, whether 
in science, morals, or art, results in attributing more of spir- 
itual character to Nature, considered as a system of existing 
and self -evolving things and selves? This conception of a uni- 
versal Nature is itself chiefly the construction of human 
imagination, — placed on a basis of knowledge of facts and of 
principles generalized from the facts, but stimulated and guided 
by sesthetical ideals. Thus the mind of man recognizes the 
spirit of truth, the spirit of ethical aspiration and self-control, 
and the spirit of beauty, as all having their source and ground 



378 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

in the Being of the One World. To speak in a more figurative 
way : This Being is conceived of, — although by methods which 
are indirect and devious, and according to ideals which are 
often shrouded in mystery — as having truth, morality, and 
beauty upon its own mind for a care ; and before its own mind 
as a goal progressively to be realized. But such a conception is 
pre-eminently the work of the aesthetical imagination. 

Some fragment, or shape, or concrete example, of the aesthet- 
ical ideal may be said to determine the intelligent and delib- 
erate judgment which affirms or denies the qualities of beauty 
to any object; whether something in nature or some product of 
any one of the various arts. But the imagination which con- 
structs the ideal does not directly reveal the reasons and grounds 
for the aesthetical judgment. How then are the rational ex- 
planations and defenses of particular judgments about mat- 
ters of beauty to be discovered ? In other words : How shall it 
be known, or even presented in plausible terms and in such a 
way as to carry a measure of conviction, that the object which 
gives aesthetical pleasure to an individual mind is really worthy 
to be called beautiful by everybody ? This is a question which 
cannot be answered a priori; it cannot be even argued on purely 
logical grounds. Its answer requires an experimental and in- 
ductive examination, with a view to elicit and expose those 
judgments which have in fact been made, and which are most 
universal and enduring in the aesthetical history and aesthetical 
evolution of the race. An appeal must be made to the best 
sesthetical taste. Such an argument does not proceed from 
general principles denning what ought to be, and concluding 
what, as a matter of truth of fact, actually is; it proceeds, the 
rather, from what in fact has been and still is, judged to be 
true, and concludes with a summary of principles denning 
what ought to be. To say the same thing in another way: 
Logicians and philosophers cannot derive by reflective thinking 
those canons of beauty which artists and critics of art-objects 
ought to follow. Nature and artists make beautiful objects; 



^STHETICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 379 

mankind, in fact, appreciate and approve of some of these as 
pre-eminently beautiful; reflective thinking seeks to discover 
what qualities nature and art actually give to these objects 
which are, in fact, judged to be beautiful. In order, therefore, 
for philosophy to assure itself as to what is the spirit of beauty, 
and as to what are the aesthetical ideals followed by nature and 
by art, it must consult the actual, concrete judgments of the 
race. These judgments of taste are expressed in two ways : first, 
in opinions as to what objects are beautiful; but more subtly 
and effectively, in the objects themselves. 

If now we ask for a consensus of opinion as to what are the 
qualities of beautiful objects in general, or even as to what 
particular objects are judged to be beautiful, we are intro- 
duced to a wide and almost unmanageable diversity. Indeed, 
the diversity of opinions in this realm is even greater than in 
the case of questions relating to what is good, what not, in 
conduct and in character. As to some of the reasons why this 
is so, we have already remarked (see p. 367f.). Partly in the 
way of recalling these reasons, and partly in the way of ex- 
panding them, we ascribe the greater, seeming uncertainty of 
aesthetical judgments: — (1) to the great difference in the in- 
terests involved; (2) to the consequent difference in the stability 
of the forms of development; and also (3) to the essentially 
vague character of the aesthetical feeling which so powerfully 
influences or even determines the judgment. 

In this connection the psychological truth must be recalled, 
that aesthetical judgments, in their very character as products 
of judging faculty (or intellectual processes) are subject to all 
the conditions which diversify, even to the point of contradic- 
tion, all the other kinds of human judgment. These condi- 
tions are chiefly the following four : The first of these is im- 
itation; for although the really aesthetical attitude toward any 
object in nature or in art must be a self-conscious and not 
a merely imitative affair; still the direction of the judgment of 
the majority is undoubteedly often a mere matter of imitation. 



380 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

Association and habit are other well-recognized factors in de- 
termining the aesthetical judgments of even the most unpreju- 
diced and competent judges. And indeed, justly and reason- 
ably so. For the qualities of beauty in the object cannot be 
dissociated from those qualities which appeal to other than 
the purely assthetical interests of mankind. Most prominent 
among such associated interests are the moral and religious. 
But economic and various forms of social interests are also in- 
fluential in determining men's judgments as to what is beauti- 
ful, what not. Above all the other justifiable causes for a some- 
what wide divergence, and even conflict, of judgments in assthet- 
ical affairs is education. Cultivated taste cannot, indeed, be 
produced by education alone; but given a constitution of spirit 
sensitive to aesthetical impressions, and education can develope 
such a taste. 

The scepticism with respect to the essential nature or spirit of 
beauty, which results from the failure to find an agreement 
as to the qualities of beautiful objects by comparing the 
opinions of the multitude and of the various authorities, is 
much mitigated by continued inquiry as to the grounds of 
these opinions. For, in the first place, it is no one quality, or 
simple combination of few qualities, which in any particular 
case necessarily conveys the title to beauty, alike to each and 
to every beautiful thing. There may be several kinds of the 
beautiful. There may be a variety of features, or characters, so 
incompatible that they cannot be combined in any one object, 
but which if they can get themselves contemplated by the ap- 
preciative mind from the right point of view, will uniformly 
be regarded as beautiful. For example, there may be one kind 
of beauty which requires size in the object; and there may be 
another kind of beauty which can find expression only in that 
which is small, or even minute. There may be one kind of 
beauty which reveals itself best in a natural scene or artistic 
construction, that is characterized by extreme simplicity; there 
may be another kind of beauty which can reveal itself only 



JESTHETICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 381 

when clothed with the ornate. The material out of which the 
object is constructed may also have something quite important, 
or even determinative, to say as to what kind of expression to 
the spirit of beauty it shall be chosen to make. Thus in art, 
as in morals, we should discover a far greater consensus of 
opinion, as bearing on the universal and permanent laws of 
assthetical judgment, and the corresponding canons of art, if 
only we could compel all men to take the same point of view. 
"We should find in art, as in morality, that the fundamental 
agreements are really far more numerous and important than 
the seemingly irreconcilable differences, if only all the causes of 
misunderstanding could be removed. He who is seeking 
the truly sublime in the merely pretty, or the pretty in the 
sublime, may' be disappointed, and indeed must be disap- 
pointed, at not finding it there. But he is not therefore, as a 
matter of course, justified in declaring any particular object 
ugly or lacking in the qualities of the spirit of beauty. Nor 
can he justify a quarrel with his fellow who is looking at the 
same object from a different but equally sesthetical point of 
view; or, who, perhaps, is not looking upon the object from a 
truly aesthetical point of view at all. Moreover, however high 
we place the value of the sesthetical in nature and in human 
life, it has no heaven-imparted right to pervert the truthful, or 
to dominate the moral, or even to disregard the economic and 
social interests of mankind. In general, the quickest and sur- 
est way to reconcile disputes about matters of assthetical taste 
is to find out whether the disputants are thinking and talking 
about precisely the same thing. 

The secret of the beautiful, the true and abiding spirit of 
beauty, however, is only to be discovered by reflection over the 
qualities of those objects which are intuitively felt and judged 
really to be beautiful. In this work of analysis, and of reflec- 
tion upon the results of analysis, the art-object is likelier to 
tell us the truth than is any beautiful thing, or scene, in nature. 
This is not at all, of course, because art-objects are more beau- 



382 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

tiful than are the constructions of the spirit of beauty 
which is in Nature. It is because man works to produce the 
beautiful in a self-conscious and self-determining way. In 
the sphere of the sesthetical, as in every other sphere, the Self 
knows itself more immediately and fully than it knows the 
Nature whose child the Self is. It is true that the highest 
geniuses in art, as in science, war, government, and philosophy, 
and perhaps even more than in any of the other fields of human 
achievement, do not fully comprehend their own inspirations or 
clearly picture the ideals they feel themselves somehow impelled 
to follow. But it is also true that the greater the real genius 
is, in all fields of human achievement, the better does he un- 
derstand his subject and himself in relation to it. And no man 
knows, or can know, the secret workings of natural forces 
in their progressive realization of nature's ideals, with the 
same inwardness and penetrating spiritual appreciation with 
which he may know the forces working within himself. There 
are then three reasons, or three ways of stating essentially one 
reason, why the inquirer who is seeking to discover the essen- 
tial spirit of beauty, must turn aside briefly to consider what 
kinds of art there are, and how the workers in these arts 
actually proceed in order to make beautiful things. For (1) 
the conscious mind may know what it intends to put into the 
beautiful object in order to make it seem beautiful; (2) the 
conscious mind may discover, in part at least, what it is in an 
art-object made by others which makes it seem beautiful; and 
thus (3) the conscious mind may reason from its more im- 
mediate experience with these objects to the more hidden secrets 
of the beautiful in nature, in a sort of analogical way. 

It remains only to notice in this connection that factor in 
sesthetical consciousness which is called the Will, or the atti- 
tude of the active Self toward the beautiful object, in nature 
and in art. This is an attitude, primarily, of desire of pos- 
session, — not selfishly, or in order that it may minister to the 
passion, pride, or self-esteem of the individual, but because of 



^STHETICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 383 

the intrinsic worth of the object itself. The beggar who is 
admitted without charge into the public park or museum may 
possess the statue, or the picture, much more truly and com- 
pletely than the millionaire who can purchase it and shut it up 
within the walls of his own house. And to shut the people 
away from the beauties of the surrounding sky, or sea, or 
plain, or mountain range, or to deny them all possession of the 
loveliness of sunlight, and foliage, and flower, is a crime for 
which no economic advantages to the few can sufficiently atone. 
For this desire to possess the beautiful object, as itself intrin- 
sically valuable and a benefit to the spirit, denies no equal 
right to anyone else; and, indeed, it wishes that the same de- 
sire of possession should be awakened and gratified in all man- 
kind. The will-full attitude of the Self toward the beautiful 
object is also, in some sort, one of submission and devotion. 
Especially is this true of the sublimely beautiful in its effects 
upon the will. And, finally, the attitude of self-denial in view 
of the prospect of contributing something to enrich the store 
of the world's beauty has been a powerful motive with all the 
most masterful artists in the history of man's artistic devel- 
opment. In this respect the self-conscious and self-determining 
mind takes its stand toward the ideal of beauty in the same 
spirit in which it takes its stand toward all its other ideals. 
The ideal is intrinsically valuable; it has worth in-itself. And 
since it has this worth, it lays upon the human will an obliga- 
tion to do something in order more fully to give the ideal a 
place in reality. Nor do we hesitate to announce a conclusion 
which we shall try still further to elucidate and defend: In 
every beautiful object, Nature as a Reality of spiritual char- 
acter and spiritual worth, reveals itself to human nature, and 
lays a sort of mandate upon the human will. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE ARTS: THEIR CLASSIFICATION AND NATURE 

The proposal to appeal directly to those objects which are 
created and esteemed to be beautiful by the self-conscious and 
self-determining mind of man, in order to discover the spirit 
of beauty which they incorporate, assumes as a matter of 
course that these objects have certain characteristics in common. 
In material, size, form, color, method of addressing the senses 
and arousing aesthetical feeling and judgment through the char- 
acter of their composition, beautiful things in nature differ 
indefinitely. In these respects, art-objects also are exceedingly 
varied. In some respects, however, both the creations of nature 
and those of art must be alike ; otherwise, how could they all be 
called beautiful? This assumption of common characteristics 
is further strengthened by the following considerations : In the 
first place, all art-objects are the products of sesthetical feeling 
and imagination on the part of those who create them — acting 
in a plan-ful way. The artist, in no matter what kind of 
material or branch of the arts, must be moved and guided by 
the sentiment of beauty. There must also be something of 
the teleological in the idea which he wishes to embody in 
the material. Plan is particularly conspicuous in some kinds of 
art, — especially so in landscape-gardening, architecture, and 
sculpture. Even in music the comparative absence of it in 
the latest music is a distinct disadvantage to its genuine 
sesthetical quality. In his Critique of Judgment — the work in 
which Kant developed his sesthetical and theological opinions 
in a somewhat artificial conjunction — his ruling idea is the 
teleological. Beauty in the object implies some sort of plan. 

Again, since all art-objects are beautiful and are intended by 
their maker to appeal to aesthetical feeling and imagination in 

384- 



THE ARTS: CLASSIFICATION AND NATURE 385 

other minds, they must all have something common to their 
respective plans, in order to make this appeal. The stirring 
of feeling, the activity of the creative image-making faculty, 
in response to the beauty of the art-object, may be of a special 
character in each individual case. But it is, nevertheless, a 
kind of response common to humanity. Generic characteristics 
must belong to the things that can excite mental attitudes 
common to the race. Only qualities common to all that is 
beautiful in the object, could appeal to mental attitudes that are 
common to all subjects, who observe and appreciate the object. 
There must he something in the one object which corresponds 
to the unity of the one self-conscious, appreciative human mind. 

And, finally, we note that, in order to become objective, 
the artistic sentiment and imagination must take concrete 
form in some kind of material. The material may be either 
so substantial and enduring as stone, or bronze, or steel; or 
it may be so unsubstantial and fleeting as tones and words. 
But successions and combinations of tones and words must have 
qualities in common with the shapes and relations of things 
made of stone, or bronze, or steel, if they are all alike to 
awaken sesthetical feeling and control sesthetical judgment. 
And, we are only repeating from! a somewhat changed point 
of view, what has already been referred to before, when we call 
attention to the significance of this important fact: It is intui- 
tion and contemplation in the presence of the beautiful object, 
rather than reasoning about it, which begets the genuinely 
assthetical appreciation of its beauty. 

Any attempt to discover the most logical Classification of 
the Arts, is met by somewhat of the same difficulties as those 
which everywhere obstruct similar inquiries. In the case of 
the arts, however, they have come quite conclusively, to classify 
themselves. This they have done by a process of development, 
which, on the one hand, has defined the appropriate spheres 
and pointed out the proper limits of each one; and which has, 
on the other hand, enabled certain of them to co-operate with, 



386 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

or to supplement, each other in a more intelligent and effective 
way. Here reference might be made to the history of the de- 
velopment of dancing, music, poetry, and the drama; or of 
painting, sculpture, and architecture. 

But we are not now interested in the arts from the historical 
or the practical points of view; we are studying the art-object 
reflectively, with a view to learn what it can tell us about its 
own essential qualities that may help to discover the more 
hidden secrets of the spirit of beauty. Any principle of classi- 
fication which will best assist the mind in this search, will be 
most satisfactory for the present purpose. Such a principle is 
found in the character of the Material employed by the different 
arts for the construction of the object which is to arouse appre- 
ciative sesthetical feeling and command an approving gesthet- 
ical judgment. Since all art must express itself in some kind 
of material, the kind of art, as expression (both in manner 
and degree) depends chiefly upon the kind of material. And 
the quality of the material which chiefly determines its relation 
to the artistic idea and plan, is its plasticity, or mouldableness. 
As an affair of physics, different materials can be handled, and 
shaped, and made expressive of ideas, in a planful way, only in 
accordance with, and in obedience to, their different physical 
properties and physical relations. As an affair of aesthetics, 
these same different materials, on account of their different 
physical properties and relations, can be made expressive of the 
sentiments and ideals of beauty, in a planful way; but only in 
different degrees and various forms. Some things will receive 
and embody certain aspects of the spirit of beauty as other 
things will not. Some materials will express the spirit of 
beauty in a rich, revealing way, as other materials cannot. The 
more plastic the matter, the more perfectly can the spirit mould 
it to an expression of the spirit's ideal. 

Beginning, then, with those kinds of art which, on account 
of a lack of plasticity in the material stand lowest, we ask of 
Landscape-Gardening, what qualities and ideals of beauty it 



THE ARTS: CLASSIFICATION AND NATURE 387 

intends to express. But at once two considerations come to the 
fore which elevate this art from other points of view, above the 
standing assigned to it in the classification which has been 
adopted. For since landscape-gardening deals with natural 
objects, its very material, before art has shaped it, has those 
qualities of beauty which are vaguely summed up in the word 
" lif elikeness " (Lebendigkeit). In this art, nature puts liv- 
ing things at the disposal of the self-conscious and self-deter- 
mining mind, for its arrangement in assthetical forms. More- 
over, in certain cases it is possible to approach by art those 
conditions of magnitude which nature employs to stir man to 
the appreciation of the beautiful which is also sublime. 

In general, however, and especially under the conditions of 
modern civilization, the sesthetical feelings and ideas which 
can be expressed by this form of art are limited by the char- 
acter of the material. There are two groups of qualities and 
relations, which two markedly different styles of landscape- 
gardening are fitted to express. And although these styles 
have, each one, their advocates, who sometimes even refuse to 
see any beauty in each other's work, we must, as philosophically 
inclined, admit the claims of both. One of these styles gives 
emphasis to the expression of the ideally orderly and harmoni- 
ous; but the other prefers to emphasize the ideally free, and 
graceful because free. Close to the borders of each runs the 
risk of over-stepping the limits and so of losing the coveted 
gesthetical effect. Too much attempt at ordering things, too 
obvious an effort to bring all into relations of exact proportion 
and into a forced agreement or balance of parts, runs the risk of 
exciting feelings of distaste for artificiality and pettiness. But 
neither can an excessive freedom, whether of self-propagation, 
or of self-nourishment, or room for growth, be allowed to 
natural objects if they are to be combined in the art of land- 
scape-gardening. However much the mind may rejoice for a 
time in the unchecked wildness of the tropical forest, this revel 
of nature cannot be imitated precisely in human art. The 



388 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

landscape-garden may, indeed, leave some spots to " run wild " 
in a relative way; and yet the complete license of nature can 
never be profitably imitated, without restrictions, in a cultivated 
portion of ground. Art, moreover, gives preference to some 
natural products rather than to others; it must protect its 
selections against their natural enemies. Here the human art 
must make nature realize its own ideal, according to the scale 
and under the conditions which inevitably belong to all land- 
scape-gardening, even better than would nature if left wholly 
to herself. Therefore, art selects some trees and shrubs and 
flowers, rather than others; it selects some branches of each 
to survive rather than others. In the minute and highly special- 
ized form of this art in Japan, for example, it directs the 
manner of growth of each branch, and determines the indi- 
vidual twigs and even the leaves that shall be allowed to de- 
velope upon each twig. 

There would seem then to be some resemblance between the 
qualities of this kind of art-objects and the different virtues. 
They not infrequently appear to come into a kind of conflict; 
and then a choice must be made as to how best to compromise 
the claims of each without violating the spirit of the ideal. 
Order and harmony, freedom and luxuriance of growth, — all 
are beautiful, as embodied in the object of art; somewhat as 
courage and wisdom, justice and kindness, must be incorpo- 
rated into the moral texture of the Self. From each of these 
leading motifs may be derived a considerable number of sub- 
ordinate rules such as control the orderly arrangement of 
spaces; the due proportion, or balance, or contrast, of shapes 
and magnitudes; the harmony and proper amounts and rela- 
tions of the coloring of the natural objects, etc. On the other 
hand, a certain license, disregard of conventions, and even 
appearance of freakishness, if it does not go to excess and if 
it manages to reveal the signs of a subtle but no less real 
regard for sesthetical effects, is by no means without a beauty 
of its very own. 



THE AKTS: CLASSIFICATION AND NATURE 389 

The conditions which the character of the material with 
respect to its plasticity impose upon the spirit of beauty in the 
art of Architecture are markedly different from those which 
prevail in landscape-gardening. They are also, on account of 
the very nature and final purpose of this art, complicated with 
other physical, economic, and social conditions. For men do 
not build houses for themselves, any more than they make 
canoes or bows and war-clubs, solely or chiefly to express and 
gratify the sentiment of beauty. In understanding where the 
art of architecture begins to control the merely utilitarian con- 
siderations of the builder, analysis must consider the prob- 
lem of architecture. What is the principal, practical question, 
the solution of which man has before him when he builds a 
structure which he wishes to have give sesthetical enjoyment? 
He must build, for safety and for comfort. He instinctively 
or deliberately imparts to what he builds some expression of 
appreciation for beauty. Building becomes architecture when 
the structure is made not only to be safe and serviceable, but 
to have such an appearance as to express and excite sesthetical 
sentiment. 

From the utilitarian point of view, the one essential thing 
about all buildings, under whatever conditions of climate and 
for whatever social purpose, and relatively independent of eco- 
nomical considerations, is the roof. When primitive man 
crawls out of his cave, or descends from his tree, he proceeds 
to make for himself some shelter for his head against the sun- 
shine and the storm. And now the logic of physics leads by a 
direct and inescapable route to the main principle which gov- 
erns the art of architecture. The steps of this logic may be 
recited briefly in the following way: Every roof is a load and 
the force of gravitation is unceasingly bearing it down toward 
the ground ; to resist this force, the load of the roof must some- 
how be supported; the way in which the load of the roof is 
supported, and the subordinate but important purposes served 
by the supports, whether to screen the inmates against weather, 



390 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

or to conceal domestic procedures, or to guard the contents 
from thieves, etc., chiefly determines the whole form; of the 
structure; and, accordingly, the different styles of architecture 
and the rules of their practice with respect to sesthetical de- 
tails, depend in the last analysis upon the character of the roof 
as a load and upon the way in which this load is supported. 
Since — and especially in all the more permanent and strong 
structures — the supports are themselves a load, the foundations 
of the building, and the arrangement upwards and sidewise, 
of the supporting sides, become a dominant architectural 
problem, as well as a problem in sound and safe building. 

A building is something to be seen, if it is to produce an 
aesthetical effect. It appeals to the mind through the eye, and 
not through the ear, as do music and poetry. If it is to produce 
the maximum assthetical effect, it must be capable of being 93s- 
thetically appreciated as a whole; and this requires that at 
least one, and if possible two of its sides, should be seen in 
their entirety at the same time. But here we must remember 
that seeing an object in its entirety " at the same time " is not 
a mathematical, much less a physically instantaneous affair. 
To use an appropriate figure of speech: the eye must be able 
to " sweep over " the whole structure, back and forth if need 
be, and to appreciate the main features of the different parts 
so as to make a synthesis of them in their respective places and 
mutual relations. This first total impression must be com- 
pleted by the roving vision within the limits of the time neces- 
sary for the synthetic activity of the imagination. Too short, 
or too long, mars the beauty of the first total impression. In 
great and elaborate objects constructed by this form of art, 
contemplative study is both necessary and possible, in a pecu- 
liar way. For the building stands there — the same day after 
day, and perhaps age after age. Each survey of it, however, 
is a particular and fleeting achievement of some self-conscious 
mind; it cannot, therefore, be beautiful to such a mind unless 
it complies with the unchanging conditions of its visual activi- 



THE ARTS: CLASSIFICATION AND NATURE 391 

ties when in use from the sesthetical point of view. For this 
reason there are certain physiological and psycho-physical con- 
ditions, with their allied forms of sesthetical feeling, for a lack 
of the knowledge of which or because the physical and eco- 
nomical conditions imposed upon them make it impossible to 
comply with what they do know to be demanded, architects 
are constantly making grave assthetical blunders. It would 
be foreign to our purpose to enter upon details here; for we 
are striving to discover only the main features which the spirit 
of beauty impresses upon its objects, alike in every one of 
the arts. Some few general considerations will, however, con- 
tribute to the success of our search. Among such considera- 
tions are the following: (1) The foundations of the building 
should appear; and they should appear to be what, from the 
builder's point of view, they really must be — foundations, 
firm and strong. No building made with human hands should 
seem to grow out of the ground, like a merely natural struc- 
ture. Hence the architectural device of employing different 
materials, and larger sizes of similar materials, for the founda- 
tions; or of marking them off by a water-table, or other signs. 
(2) So, too, wherever it is possible, the roof should be seen as 
a load; and if it is the case of a massive structure, the roof 
should appear as being the great load that it really is. But 
above all, every part of this load should not only be sufficiently 
supported, but it should seem to he sufficiently supported. To 
say, as did my friend, the engineer, of a certain church, that 
he " never could understand why the roof did not fall " is to 
condemn the structure from the artistic as well as from the 
physical point of view. (3) The perception and appreciation 
of the form, arrangement, and significance of the various visible 
parts, should be made obvious and an achievement to be gained 
without difficult and disagreeable psycho-physical impressions. 
The eyes move freely together over the fields that may be cov- 
ered along both the horizontal and the vertical axes; but they 
do not take kindly to the task of working together in oblique 



392 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

directions. Repetitions of forms that are integral parts of the 
structure, or of different species of ornamentation, must there- 
fore occur, in the main, in series up and down, or right and left, 
if they are to be synthesized into an agreeable and appreciative 
gesthetical impression. One corrollary from this rule is illus- 
trated by the ease of the modern sky-scraper which must be 
seen, if seen as a whole at all, from the opposite of a narrow 
street. Only by grouping its many stories, under a few general 
features of the fagade, can its inherent tendency to a painful 
ugliness of monotony, be in a measure avoided. But if this 
is done, a touch of sublimity — somewhat artificial and unlike 
the sublimity of nature or of the moral hero, it is true — may 
be imparted to such a structure. 

In what has already been said about the art of architecture, 
it has been made plain how the spiritual qualities of strength, 
planful ordering and harmony, or the triumph of mind over 
what appears as dead matter to give it expressive form, domi- 
nates the structure of the object. The object is made beautiful 
just so far as it expresses these qualities by moulding the stuff 
given to the artist's hand. In a more impressive way the same 
truth is taught, when it is considered how the main, different 
styles of architecture seize upon, and emphasize by the forms 
of expression which they contrive, the different main kinds of 
beauty, as these will be named for recognition in the follow- 
ing chapter. For example, there is the beauty of sublimity, 
which requires size and especially height in the structure, as 
in the Gothic cathedral ; here the load of the roof visibly towers 
aloft, but is amply supported on the outside by buttresses, 
and within by pillars that are clusters of supporting partners in 
the difficult achievement, and which spread out under the roof 
their uplifted hands with many fingers, as though the task were 
accomplished easily and with a kind of aerial joy. But there 
is also the beauty which is chiefly characterized by symmetry 
and proportion. In this style of architecture the Greeks ex- 
celled; and nothing since has been done to equal them; for all 



THE ARTS: CLASSIFICATION AND NATURE 393 

that has since been done has been copied or borrowed from them. 
In this style, the roof is frankly displayed at the front as a load 
which rests upon the architrave; and then beneath this is the 
row of pillars which appear quite competent and quietly secure 
in their task of supporting the architrave. Justness of pro- 
portion, simplicity and symmetry, — all the rational qualities 
of the calm and philosophic mind — are expressed and culti- 
vated by these art objects. The ornamentation is confined 
to those lines of the building where it can be most easily seen; 
it is significant of the purpose of the structure; it is kept un- 
der a control which corresponds with the life and intent of 
the whole. But the kinds of beauty which are especially dis- 
tinguished by the qualities of grace, or by a certain wild and 
luxuriant outburst of the vital forces that strive to find ex- 
pression in moulding to their uses even the materials most lack- 
ing in a natural plasticity, have also their appropriate style 
of architecture. Such is the Moorish architecture; but, per- 
haps, above all, the palaces and tombs of the Muhammadan 
conquerors of Northern India. It might seem that marble 
and other harder stones were not appropriate for carving into 
a tracery of leaves, and into fruits and flowers ; but to one in the 
right mood, which is neither the strictly religious, nor the 
strictly practical, nor the strictly rational, but rather the dreamy 
and luxuriating, there is nothing in the world to surpass the 
Taj Mahal, and other structures of this sort. As to that kind 
of beauty which may be called the pretty or the merely hand- 
some; it, too, may be realized in architecture, if the building 
is characterized by simplicity and reserve, by a study of good 
form in the outlines, and by an absence of all attempt to put 
on beauty from without; especially when the resulting struc- 
ture is associated with the sober business of trade or manu- 
facture, or with the feelings of comfort and home-likeness. 

The relations of architecture to sculpture and the allied arts 
are both historical and natural. In Greek art, where both 
of these arts reached so high a degree of development, archi- 



394 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

tecture and sculpture were employed together for the expres- 
sion of a common ideal, the latter serving — as in the notable 
example of the frieze of the Parthenon — as an expressive deco- 
ration for the former. Such a union of these two arts, in serv- 
ice, is still a desirable means of enhancing the sesthetical effect ; 
but chiefly, or only, in the case of large public buildings — 
such as Halls of Justice, Legislation, Commerce, Education, 
and Museums of Industry and Art — where more definite ideas 
control the beautifying of the structure. 

From the point of view which we have chosen to assume, 
Sculpture stands higher than architecture ; although the former 
is properly subservient to the latter. It uses the same mate- 
rials, such as wood, metal, stone; but the limitations of size, 
and the greater freedom from economic and social require- 
ments, enable the sculptor to represent more purely and ef- 
fectively the triumph of the spirit over the material in giving 
to it the beauty of form. Especially is this true when the 
ideas and sentiments of the spirit find their supreme visible 
expression in the varying attitudes and relations of the human 
form. In order, therefore, to reach its highest development as 
an artistic medium for the expression of the beauty of form, 
sculpture must have an independent life and growth. This 
independence it secured in a considerable measure in ancient 
Assyria and Egypt, and in India, where it was and still is 
employed to express religious ideas; but above all others, 
among the Greeks. The beginnings of the two developments — 
the one in union with structures which have economic and 
social uses, and the other which seeks rather for the free ex- 
pression of ideas and feelings in independence of such uses — 
go back to savage and primitive man. He carves decorative 
forms upon his utensils; and he also satisfies his artistic de- 
sires, generally in connection with religious interests, by mak- 
ing detached effigies of more or less realistic or mythical and 
imaginative animal and human beings. 

Of all the arts, sculpture stands at the head as moulding its 



THE ARTS: CLASSIFICATION AND NATURE 395 

material into expressions of the beauty of pure form. Now it 
is life which gives form. This is true even of all inanimate 
objects which have beauty of form; they appear to us as though 
shaped in beauty by an indwelling life. Lifelikeness, then, 
must be the pre-eminent characteristic of all the beauty of sculp- 
tured form. The shapes of all things that have life are modi- 
fied, either slowly or swiftly, so as to express the nature of 
the forces in whose possession and active co-operation the life 
itself consists. In the case of our own self-conscious and self- 
determining mind, we know that the most precious and potent 
of these forces are our own thoughts, sentiments, and pur- 
poses. The life which belongs to others of our own species, with 
its thoughts, sentiments, and purposes, we have no other so sure, 
visible means of appreciating as that which consists in changes 
of their external form. We infer the same thing to be true of 
the lower animals. By the very essential terms of our knowl- 
edge, we imagine the same thing to be also true of all self- 
like beings; and all things in nature are more or less self-like; 
and looked at from the right point of view, they almost, if 
not quite, all have a marvellous beauty of form. 

All the resources of modern physiology and psychology might 
be invoked to describe and emphasize the strength and subtlety 
of those relations which exist between the various kinds and in- 
tensities of the mental states and the changes in the muscular 
system, which so largely control the human form. The 
most complete skill in the plastic arts can imitate all these 
changes with more or less commendable success. But, in gen- 
eral, the truer province of the art of sculpture is with such of 
those ideas and sentiments of the human mind as are most im- 
portant and most universal. The trifling and ephemeral concep- 
tions and feelings are apt to prove tiresome when given the im- 
portance and permanency of an expression in stone, metal, wood, 
or other material available for this art. Thus sculpture sur- 
passes painting in the expression of those qualities of gravity, 
repose, strength, and grace, which the indwelling life imparts 



396 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

to the forms life assumes, and especially to the human form; 
while expressive but painful attitudes, sculptured yawns or 
smiles, and even sculptured flowers, come nearer to the perilous 
limits where the beautiful is separated from the ugly by the 
character of the contrasted feelings which the two call forth. 
On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that all these 
sentiments and thoughts belong to human life; that the pitiful 
and the comic are not to be excluded from the field of the arts; 
and that almost any human experience may be looked upon so 
as to excite genuine sesthetical, as well as genuine ethical, 
sentiments and ideas. 

It appears, then, that those qualities of the object which are 
imparted by this peculiar form of art, are essentially the same 
as the qualities which have already been recognized as char- 
acterizing the spiritual content of the lower forms of art. 
But in sculpture, the superior mouldableness of the material in 
its relation to the artistic object admits of a much more varied 
and rich content than in landscape-gardening and architecture. 
More ideas and sentiments, of the sort which command gesthet- 
ical appreciation, can be given expression under the conditions 
which limit this art ; it is, therefore, superior from the point of 
view assumed in our inquiry after the spirit of beauty. In 
a word, more of the qualities of a beautiful spirit, of a life 
corresponding to a spiritual ideal, can be embodied in the 
statue, or group of statues, or other sculptured forms, than in 
a landscape-garden or in a building devoid of sculpture. It 
would help the inquiry, did space permit, to discuss again the 
old problem offered by the sculptured Laocoon, and his sons, 
struggling in vain with the monstrous serpents. It would ap- 
pear that its claim to beauty lies partly in the sesthetical as 
well as moral interest which man naturally takes in all contests 
that put the will to a test for courage and endurance ; but more 
especially, when the story is known, in the gesthetical as well 
as moral admiration for the self-sacrificing heroism of the 
father in behalf of his two sons. 



THE ARTS: CLASSIFICATION AND NATURE 397 

What has already been said about sculpture in the more 
strict meaning of the word applies, although in a less obvious 
and important way, to all kinds of the plastic art, whatever 
the material employed. 

Painting and the pictorial arts, in their effort to give a 
varied and rich spiritual content to the objects they construct, 
have certain further advantages over the plastic arts, which are 
due to the increased plasticity of the material. This material 
is, of course, some kind of colored pigment or wash laid upon a 
background of paper, canvas, mortar, or even wood, metal, and 
stone. The pictorial arts are intimately allied, both in their 
nature and in their historical development, with the arts of 
architecture and of sculpture. The superior power of expres- 
sion which painting has, as compared with sculpture, is due 
chiefly to two important particulars. It can express a greater 
variety of human ideas and feelings, a fuller experience of the 
human spirit in all its relations; because it can depict, or sug- 
gest, man's relations to nature, with its smaller or larger ex- 
panses of sky, sea, and landscape. And it can also depict, or 
suggest, many men in the complicated situations of actual his- 
tory, or of artistic imagination. Thus the thoughts and senti- 
ments with which nature itself seems full, and which reveal 
the spiritual content of things as they appeal to man's sesthet- 
ical consciousness, are presented in a powerful and large- 
minded way. Even the naturally sublime can be made to ap- 
peal to the eye by a painting as it cannot by either architecture 
or sculptured form. The spirit of man can commune with the 
spirit of things, through the medium of pictorial art. Thus, 
too, those common interests, common thoughts and sentiments, 
and common movements, which involve many men, can be put 
before the human mind in the artistic way. 

The second of the two important causes of the superiority of 
painting is the increased lifelikeness and warmth of feeling 
which the use of color imparts. Sculpture must rely chiefly 
on form, and is therefore naturally cold, and with a certain 



398 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

suggestion of a lack of life; or even a suggestion of death. 
But form, both in things and in man, has color; and color 
is in no case independent of a suggestion of the character of 
the indwelling life. In natural objects it is not superficial, 
not laid on from without ; the rather does it shine through from 
within, and its changes as the relations between indwelling life 
and the life of the sunlight are modified, are a revelation of 
the character of that play in which the spirit is constantly tak- 
ing part. Combining these two advantages, painting can set 
humanity forth, as a bit of nature warm with its own peculiar 
life, in a natural or social environment that is colored by the 
character of its own life, — a contesting and contrasting, or a 
sympathetic abode for man. All the experiences of the human 
spirit, in an environment whose nature is adaptive, appreciative, 
sympathetic, can thus be represented by the different resources 
of the pictorial arts. All the phases of external nature, which 
are suggestive of an indwelling spirit that resembles the human 
spirit — only grander, more subtle, mysterious and alluring — 
can be represented by the same arts. The limitations which 
the character of the materials employed impose upon the ses- 
thetical sentiments and ideas of both artist and beholder are, 
nevertheless, fixed and obvious. The same thing is true of the 
temptations to conventional degeneracy, to mere imitation, to 
an undue exaltation of the trivial and the petty; or on the 
other hand, to a slovenly disregard of form and of effects 
which can be reached only by a patient devotion to ideals. But 
perhaps above all, painting suffers from the temptation to be- 
come a minister to the love of luxury and to lust. 

The question of how far art ought to be merely or chiefly 
imitative, — or, to put the problem in more acceptable terms, 
" true to nature," — and how far chiefly creative and suggestive 
of something higher than the concrete realizations of artistic 
ideals which purely natural objects afford, comes to the front 
in painting. Here the nature of the material has less to say 
about what the physical limitations of the artistic imagination 



THE ARTS: CLASSIFICATION AND NATURE 399 

shall, of necessity, be. There are, therefore, schools of paint- 
ing — realistic or idealistic, minutely accurate or romantic and 
suggestive — to a much larger extent than is possible in the arts 
of landscape-gardening, architecture, and sculpture. But the 
maxims, " true to life " and " faithful to realit} r ," afford no 
definitive solution to such a problem until we have raised and 
answered the questions : To what kind of life and reality must 
art be true? Whether attention be given to the actual quali- 
ties of things and selves, or to the forms of expression which 
these qualities assume, no superficial survey will suffice to say: 
— TVhat that is alive and real is also really beautiful? Only 
reflective thinking can answer this question. As has already 
been shown, reflection must indeed be placed upon a basis of 
actual experience in which the historical witness of the arts, as 
recorded in the objects approved by the developing sesthetical 
sentiment and judgments of mankind, has made itself known. 
And, as we rise higher in the scale of the arts, we seem more 
clearly to gather the meaning of this historical witness. It is 
the ideals of that spiritual life, which the self-conscious and 
self-determining mind knows to be its own, and when in its 
right mind, considers to be of supreme value; the same ideals 
which the mind attributes to the possession and expression 
of Nature, in the objects of her construction, — it is these ideals 
in which the essence of the beautiful is to be sought and found. 
It is not so much a marked advance as a great and sudden 
change that is encountered when the art of Music is consid- 
ered with reference to the plasticity of the material which it 
employs. In music the material of sesthetical expression is 
sound-waves which cause conscious tones of varying intensity, 
tonal quality, and pitch. These sound-waves are themselves 
first moulded by the vibrations of some form of a tube, or 
string, or hollow box subject to percussion; or by the human 
organs of speech. The psycho-physical relations in which the 
stimuli stand to the sensations received mainly by the ear are 
such as to render sounds by far the most plastic and easily 



400 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

varied and effective media for the arts in expressing and ap- 
pealing to the sesthetical nature of man. The superiority of 
music over the arts already considered consists chiefly in these 
two respects: First, the nature of its material is such that it 
can present the art-object in an actual time-series. Thus a 
single musical composition may be made to appeal to the many 
changes of interests, and moods, with their varying values, 
which occur in the actual spiritual life. This life in man is 
itself a succession in time. As a succession in time, it is al- 
ways changing; and, in this succession, it is sometimes joy- 
ful and sometimes sad; sometimes struggling with temptation 
or penitent over temptations yielded to, and sometimes trium- 
phant and heroic; sometimes transported by love and some- 
times by resentment; sometimes anguished by pain, grief, and 
disappointment; but often also uplifted by aspiration, longing, 
and tender sympathy. The plastic and pictorial arts can only 
obscurely and imperfectly remind the soul of these changes of 
its own experience in time. Nature, since she is subject to 
similar changes which are suggestive of the different moods 
and varying states of the human spirit, also lives her life, in 
time. Therefore, in this one respect at least, music represents 
man's environment for sesthetical appreciation, far better than 
do the plastic and pictorial arts. For the ear of man is, in a 
special manner, the organ of time; and through its use of 
this organ, art can either lead or keep pace with consciousness 
which is always a succession of states in time. 

But the second and allied reason for the superiority of music 
is even more important. Above all other arts, music expresses 
and arouses the emotions, as such. The mastery of the emo- 
tions by this form of art is chiefly due to these three charac- 
teristics: — (1) Music appeals to and expresses all the kinds 
and shades of human feeling with emphasis and power. Are 
the emotions grave and solemn and compelling to the soul 
which cannot escape quickly from their grasp; and so cannot 
resume its light-hearted and quick-stepping way of receiving 



THE ARTS: CLASSIFICATION AND NATURE 401 

the incidents of life? Musicians use a style, a tempo, and a 
weight and pitch of harmonious or somewhat dissonant chords, 
which shall speak a language truer to this feeling than any suc- 
cession of articulate words. But if the heart feels like dancing, 
and the will can scarcely control the muscles from executing 
what the heart feels; then, too, there is a style, and tempo, 
and weight and pitch of musical sounds, adapted to this mood 
of the mind's life. With our modern instruments, especially 
by the full orchestra, or the grand organ, or the military band, 
and in only less degree by the pianoforte, the feeling for the 
sublime can be stimulated and lifted to a height scarcely below 
the power of all but the most sublime scenes in nature, and 
quite above what any of the plastic or pictorial arts can easily 
reach. Indeed, there is little doubt that a thorough psycho- 
physical analysis of the bodily conditions for the feeling of the 
sublime, would show that they are most easily brought about 
by immensities of sound. 

(2) The superior control of music over the emotions depends 
also upon the fact that its appeal is made to such of them as 
are most fundamental and universal, and in a simple, direct 
way. It is not the feeling peculiar to " poor me/' but the 
feeling, of whatever sort, which I share in common with the 
race, to which the art of music makes its most legitimate and 
therefore successful appeal. In a word, it is human feeling; 
it is the emotion which is universal and common to mankind. 
The private experience in so far as it is associated with particu- 
lar ideas and unusual emotions is not so much the proper field 
of musical expression. The composer, indeed, may be moved to 
expression, and guided in his expression, by what is born of, 
and intimately associated with, his own private and even very 
peculiar experiences. But if his composition is to be a beauti- 
ful object, it must stir and guide similar feeling in the listener, 
irrespective of personal differences in associations, that are due 
to equally private and peculiar experiences. It is ministry to 
joy, to sorrow, to love, to resentment, to aspiration and long- 



402 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ing, to struggle for achievement and to peace secured or for- 
feited but to be regained — all that is common and universal in 
human emotion — within which lies the true beauty of the 
musician's art. And like every other true artist, the great 
musical composer imparts the qualities of his own spirit to the 
plastic material furnished by the invisible and intangible air- 
waves, — not selfishly as though their greatest worth were to 
win pity or applause for himself, but the rather to express, 
to satisfy, and to cultivate the profoundest and most universal 
emotions of humanity. From this point of view it appears 
how just and natural is the alliance between music and religion ; 
and, as well, between music and all the more important civic 
and social ideals of the race. We are also reminded of the fact 
that mere admiration for technical skill, — for the high G or 
even the high F of the soprano, or for the graceful bowing or 
rapid trilling of the virtuoso, — however natural or proper it 
may be, is a totally different thing from a true appreciation for 
the beauty of the art-object in music. 

(3) The other two characteristics of music lead to a third 
which in some sort summarizes them both. This is the free- 
dom of music as an art. This, superior freedom is indeed 
largely due to the superior plasticity of its material. But the 
character of the material is not the whole cause. The freedom 
of musical art is also due to what the art is chiefly trying to 
express. This, as we have seen, is chiefly those emotions of the 
self-conscious spirit, which occur in a succession of time, and 
which constitute the important values of the life of the spirit. 
That it should rejoice, hope, aspire, achieve and feel trium- 
phant; but equally also that it should suffer, struggle, know 
disappointment and loss, and win peace by effort; — these are 
the supremely valuable experiences of the self-conscious and 
self-determining mind. To have these experiences is to lead the 
spiritually beautiful life. It is the kind of life to which that 
Nature, whose personification as an expression of immanent 
spirit, we are more and more convinced, is a legitimate work 



THE ARTS: CLASSIFICATION AND NATURE 403 

of the thought and imagination of man, has consigned every 
individual as a member of the race; has, indeed, consigned the 
entire race. This Nature is all "groaning and travailing to- 
gether " in its search for redemption. Above all the plastic 
and pictorial arts, music is free to express and to appeal to 
aesthetical sentiments and ideas, because these sentiments are 
so fundamental and universal, while the attached ideas are so 
vague and vast and unrestricted in meaning. 

The various qualities of the art-objects, as we have seen 
them to appear in the construction of the other arts, — such 
as strength and suggestions of courage and heroic effort, order 
and proportion, freedom' and grace — are all qualities which 
contribute to the determination as a thing of beauty of the 
musical composition. But the very nature of the life which 
the musical composition is adapted to express with a power, 
simplicity, and freedom, excelling any other art, puts it under 
certain limitations. Music can be made, to a considerable de- 
gree, imitative of natural sounds, or descriptive of physical 
and social situations and relations. It had its origin largely 
in the imitation of nature; for nature herself appeals in varied 
and marvellously effective ways through the ear to man's 
agsthetical consciousness. There is the roaring, moaning, sigh- 
ing, and murmuring of wind and sea, the sweet and peaceful 
soughing of the grains and grasses, the thunderous sound fol- 
lowing the lightning flash or the falling of the avalanche; as 
well as the songs of birds, the chirping of the cicadas and other 
insects, and many other utterances of a natural kind. And 
there are musical qualities in all these sounds; none of them 
are mere noises. The best music is, however, although minis- 
tering, not didactic ; and when music attempts to use the meth- 
ods of poetry and of the dramatic art, whether by itself or in 
combination with these modes of aesthetical expression (opera, 
oratorio, song), it inevitably loses something of its own peculiar 
power. It may gain, however, a partial equivalent in other 



404 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

The bond which has always connected poetry and dancing 
with music is twofold. They are all rhythmic in their nature; 
they all keep time, and they all express, though in different 
ways, to a considerable extent, the same emotions. 

Poetry, although in some particulars inferior to each of the 
other arts, surpasses them all in its power to express and arouse 
assthetical sentiments in combination with definite sesthetical 
ideas. It is, therefore, man's supreme form for giving voice 
to his particular feelings and more definite judgments respect- 
ing the beautiful in nature and in human life. Nor is it diffi- 
cult to see why this is so. And the reasons, when discovered, 
carry us a long way into the very heart of the life of beauty. 

Poetry shares with music the advantage of using sound as its 
highly plastic or mouldable material. But it surpasses music 
in its power of definite expression; because, although it is 
inferior in the ability to stir a quick and passionate response 
by way of emotion, its material of sound-waves is moulded into 
the form of human language or articulate speech. Language 
is the supremely human form for the expression both of feel- 
ings and of ideas. The experiences of the self-conscious and 
self-determining mind of man are both known and communi- 
cated in language as by no other medium. If one could not 
talk to one's self, could not put into expression in words the 
experiences of one's own which no other knows, it is doubtful 
whether these experiences could ever take, even for one's self, 
the values of truth, beauty, or morality. The spirit of the race 
has made human language ; but the language made by the race 
for the individual is no dispensable factor in the creation of 
the individual's sesthetical ideas and sentiments; as well as in 
determining the character and limitations of his knowledge 
and of his morals. That the communication of the higher 
and more definite forms of sentiment and ideation require 
language, needs no argument. 

The supremacy of language as the human mode of expres- 
sion appears more clearly from such considerations as follow: 



THE ARTS; CLASSIFICATION AND NATURE 405 

(1) A careful comparison of human language with, all the 
various and subtle ways of communication employed by the 
lower animals, shows that in every important particular man's 
articulate speech embodies all the peculiar excellences of his 
entire nature, as a being of thought, feeling, and will. Espe- 
cially in this connection should it be noticed, how all the various 
intensities and shades of human feeling shape the emphasis, 
the arrangement, the rhythm, as well as the conceptual content, 
of the uttered word. Emotion of any sort, instinctively and 
inevitably affects articulate speech. So true is this, that prose 
can scarcely become empassioned and remain mere prose. So 
true is this that familiarity makes men more sensitive to the 
delicate shadings of accent and emphasis which feeling imparts 
— and no less when the speaker is striving to suppress or con- 
ceal the feeling — than to the meaning of the words as inter- 
preted by common usage or by lexicographic authority. 

(2) Language is also capable of almost limitless development 
as the experience of the race requires it for its growing science, 
art and philosophy. It is doubtful whether the very character 
of the material will allow real growth of the art of architec- 
ture and sculpture, beyond what ancient and mediaeval times 
left to the world centuries ago; and whether painting can be 
made any more beautiful, or developed in quite new directions, 
to excel the work of the greatest of the old masters. Music, 
too, can make combinations of sounds, by grace of modern 
instrumentation, that were unheard in former days; but will 
it give birth to musicians surpassing the art of Beethoven, 
Schubert, or Mozart? We may not, indeed, have poets of 
greater artistic genius or talent, in the centuries to come than 
those which have sung in past centuries. In general, the arts 
are not capable of the same unlimited development which be- 
longs to the particular sciences. But if the form of beauty 
which poetry takes does not make increase, it will not be be- 
cause its medium of expression has reached the limits of its 
possible development. 



406 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

By its very nature, then, poetry is fitted to express and to 
arouse every form and shade of aesthetical sentiments and ideas 
as no other art can. It can speak, not simply of love as a 
fundamental and universal emotion, but of all the particular 
forms and phases of love; it can depict all the imaginable 
features of attractiveness and lovableness belonging to the be- 
loved object. It can deal in the same way with the human 
emotions of grief, anger, longing, aspiration, resignation, and 
every other experience of the spirit's life in its present physical 
and social environment. And it can set this life into a sympa- 
thetic environment, both physical and social, with more of 
definiteness and warmth of coloring than is possible for the 
kindred art of painting. And while painting can only suggest 
those spiritual qualities of Nature which the appreciative eye 
discerns in her various scenes and moods, poetry can utter 
their voice with an unmistakable distinctness. 

Since it also, like music, moves in time, poetry can give aes- 
thetical expression and value to all the changing incidents of 
human life, in the actual order of their occurrence. Thus it 
can move with an even step along with the human spirit in its 
walk through the pathway of life. Hence its supreme lifelikeness 
— a congeries, or rather, artistic grouping of qualities brought 
about by the creative imagination, which we have found to 
afford one of the most important tests of the beauty of every 
art-object. Indeed, it would not be an unpardonable exaggera- 
tion to say that the truly best poetry is the expressed life of 
the spirit of beauty in the spirit of man. To all these excel- 
lences, which are chiefly due to the character of its medium, 
poetry owes its supremacy as a uniquely human form of art. 
It is the medium of man, of living man, for the active and 
definite expression of his spiritual experiences, as no other 
medium can express them, on their aesthetical and aesthetically 
appreciative side. 

The aesthetical effect of poetry is further greatly increased 
by the variety and strength of the associated ideas and feelings 



THE ARTS: CLASSIFICATION AND NATURE 407 

which its use of language enables it definitely and deliberately 
to elicit. The artist in other fields of art cannot surely reckon 
upon the character of those associations which his object, when 
produced, is likely to call forth in the individual. In the art 
of music particularly, he does not wisely aim to control too 
strictly the associated ideas; he is satisfied if he can produce 
those kinds of fundamental and universal emotion which cor- 
respond to his theme and to its treatment. But the poet must 
always have a more definite aim. Even if it is the feeling of 
mystery, in the most vague and general way, which the comr 
poser wishes to express and to stimulate; he cannot talk non- 
sense; he cannot use words that have no definite meaning, or 
suggestions of definite associations, to any human soul. The 
failure to have any clear meaning, with its customary disregard 
of all form, is the chief degradation and destruction of much 
of our modern music and poetry. But, then, it too is charac- 
teristic of much of our modern life. 

Similar conclusions of a practical sort are reached when we 
consider that he who wishes the ministrations of this form 
of art can find them to fit every one of his peculiar experiences, 
and all of the associated feelings and ideas with which these 
experiences are now accompanied or are remembered as having 
been accompanied in past time. One cannot actually see again 
the Himalayas, the Jotunheim Mountains, or the Alps, by 
reading imaginative descriptions of mountains; but one can 
read some poem which expresses the beauty of that sublimity 
which belongs to them all. One cannot actually see again the 
Taj Mahal by moonlight, when looking upon the page of a 
printed book; but one may stimulate similar states of imagina- 
tion and feeling with pictures and associations, moulded into 
the right artistic form by some master of the poetical art. 

An analysis of those formal qualities which are thought 
to give beauty to the object in poetical art shows them to be 
essentially the same as those common to all the other arts. 
Strength, proportion, freedom and grace, luxuriousness or sim- 



408 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

plicity of the noble sort, characterize the form of the truly- 
great products of the poets in every age and clime. But no 
more in poetry, than in the other arts, or than in human life 
when considered from the ethical point of view, can all these 
characteristics be realized in any one form of language at one 
and the same time. Thus different poems, like different build- 
ings, pieces of sculpture, paintings, or musical compositions, 
are beautiful in different ways. For as we are about to dis- 
cover, there are different and measurably incompatible kinds 
of beauty, to which different typical forms of our aesthetical 
consciousness respond; although the spirit of beauty is one and 
the same. But like the human spirit, and — as we believe — like 
the Spirit of Nature — this unity is not sameness, or monot- 
ony, or identity without change. It is, the rather, just this 
wealth of variety which is realized in every spiritual life and 
development — although it is all under the control of an 
Ideal. What has been said about all the other arts shows us 
that, when considered from the purely sesthetical point of view, 
the supreme kind of art is found in the form of the Drama. 
For this, at its best, gives us the whole Self, as self-conscious 
and self-determining mind, in the complex environment of 
nature and human society, thinking, feeling, and in action; but 
as represented to itself, for self-appreciation, in the^ most ef- 
fective sesthetical form. And as Aristotle long ago said, it is 
Tragedy, which is the supreme and morally purifying form of 
the drama. But this very power of the dramatic representa- 
tion of human life to express and set forth this life in its 
totality, makes the drama, when aesthetically bad, the most 
disturbing and disgusting of all the failures of an attempt at 
art; and makes it, when morally unworthy, the worst possible 
corrupter of the public taste and the public morals. Infinitely 
worse, both from the ethical and the psychological points of 
view, than bad architecture, bad sculpture, bad painting, or 
bad music, is the aesthetically ugly and morally unscrupulous 
stage. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY 

The enormous differences which exist among the different 
objects esteemed beautiful, whether in nature or in art, and 
which are partly due to differences in material and partly to 
economic and utilitarian considerations, compel us, in our 
search for the spirit of beauty, to return to a more careful 
analysis of aesthetical experience. The different forms of ad- 
miration which men give to these objects correspond to the 
different kinds of beauty which the objects present. The fact 
of universal experience is that the human spirit is moved in 
notably different ways while contemplating these objects. From 
this follows the postulate or metaphysical assumption which is 
the ultimate aim of our inquiry. It may be stated in a prelim- 
inary way as follows: The varied movements of the human 
spirit correspond in some rational sort to the spiritual quali- 
ties actually belonging to the real objects. That there are 
kinds of beauty in reality is the explanation for the corre- 
sponding kinds of man's aesthetical consciousness. But since 
the latter are matters of fact that admit of investigation by 
more or less sure scientific methods, while the former are in- 
ferences or faiths of reflective thinking about which the mind 
may easily have its doubts, the philosophy of beauty begins 
with the matters of fact. 

The notably different states of consciousness that fall under 
the common category of the aesthetical, seem to depend chiefly 
upon the following three factors: (1) The feelings awakened, 
especially with respect to their sensuous qualities, and their 
varying intensities, and magnitudes or massiveness (seizure of, 
and spreading over, all the bodily organs) ; (2) The imagina- 

409 



410 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

tion and intellect in their joint work of picturing and thinking, 
which the intuition of the object both stimulates and requires; 
and (3) the character and number of the associations that are 
awakened, and that in general group themselves very differ- 
ently according to the nature of the object which imagination 
and thought present to the mind. From all these points of 
view — to illustrate — we may contrast our sesthetical attitude, 
when divested of all personal fears or other non-gesthetical 
motifs, in the presence of a storm at sea and when looking 
upon a lovely orchid; or when viewing an eruption of Vesuvius 
and when examining one of the tiny vases buried by its ashes 
so long ago. 

Without claiming perfection, or even freedom from all ob- 
jectionable features, for this classification, we will recognize 
as sufficient for our purpose, five markedly different kinds of 
the beautiful to which the sesthetical nature of man responds 
in five markedly different ways. The psychological differences 
in the attitudes of the Self toward these kinds of beauty have 
already been explained as chiefly due to differences in the blend- 
ing of the three factors of sensuous feeling, active imagination 
or creative thought, and sympathetic association of ideas. 
These five kinds are (1) the Sublime; (2) the. Graceful; (3) 
the Orderly, or Harmonious; (4) the Unrestrained, and so 
Luxurious or Wild; and (5) the Pretty, or Handsome. 

The feelings excited by what men consider sublimely beauti- 
ful have, of necessity, a certain sensuous intensity, but more 
especially a massiveness and wide-spreading sensuous char- 
acter. In extreme, but typical cases, the heart seems enlarged; 
the breathing deepens; the head wants to uplift itself; the 
whole body seems to expand. In general, there is an emotional 
condition which announces an increase of the release of stored 
energy, a sense of being extraordinarily alive. But in such 
cases, there is also a sequent, if not accompanying feeling of 
being overstrained, overpowered; as of being too weak and 
small adequately to appreciate the sublimity of the object. 



THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY 411 

Imagination and intellect are correspondingly stimulated to a 
condition of excited activity in the effort worthily to fill out 
the picture, or the conception, which is the real object toward 
which the mind is, by the external stimuli, pointed the way. 
For in the sublimely beautiful, more than in any other kind 
of beauty, there is always something far more than what is 
merely presented to the senses. Meantime, also, a rush of 
associated impressions or clearer ideas adds further intensity 
and expressiveness to the entire mental and emotional condi- 
tion. Enlargement and uplift are thus communicated to the 
spirit. 

In his treatment of the sublimely beautiful, the philosopher 
Kant recognized two species of the emotion which corresponded 
to two classes of characteristics in the object. These were the 
mathematically sublime and the dynamically sublime. The 
immensities of time and space, when the imagination is encited 
to the effort to picture them by some concrete representation 
of them — for example, the sky as viewed in Egypt or made 
known by astronomy, the aeons of actual history, or those more 
extended aeons borrowed from infinite time by the modern 
theory of evolution — excite the sentiments and ideas of this 
kind of beauty. But above all, this effect is produced by the 
attempt to conceive of God under such terms as the Infinite 
or the Absolute. This species of the " mathematical sublime " 
is contemplated and appreciated with less of physical agitation 
and strain than is the dynamically sublime. Great exhibitions 
of any form of energy excite human admiration, whether — as 
for the most part — made by natural forces or by collective 
bodies of men. The resistless movement of the railroad train, 
the ponderous and powerful machinery of the modern steam- 
ship, as well as the thunder storm, the volcanic explosion, the 
earthquake, when separated from the images of the destruction 
they wreak, excite us in similar manner. Pretty, they cer- 
tainly are not; but the sublime stands above the pretty in spir- 
itual impressiveness and charm. 



412 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

These Kantian divisions, however, do not properly cover the 
entire field of the sublime. Kant himself recognized the truth 
that respect for the moral law was a form of emotion which 
had a place under both of the two categories, the ethical and 
the sesthetical. His attitude toward his own conception of this 
law was one which demanded for its expression the warmth of 
coloring imparted by the sentiment of the sublimely beautiful. 
And, indeed, the morally sublime is the supremely worthy ex- 
ample under the general species. It is this which accounts 
for, and justifies, the fact that there is a certain unmistakable 
kinship between the feelings with which men view Niagara 
or the sky over the Arabian Desert, and those with which they 
think of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, or of David 
Livingstone dead upon his knees in Africa. In the heroism of 
man's spirit, when it triumphs over temptation and weakness, 
nature gives us the supreme concrete expression of the morally 
sublime. " God," said Hegel, " is a spirit and it is only in 
man that the medium through which the divine element passes 
has a conscious spirit that actively realizes itself." As to the 
sublime in the products of art he further declares that " God 
is operative neither more nor less than in the phenomena of 
nature; but the divine element, as it makes itself known in the 
work of art, has attained, as being generated out of mind, an 
adequate thoroughfare for its existence." 

Doubtless it would not be consistent with the same principle 
-of division to make a special class of the sublimity of the mys- 
terious. But it may be noted as an important and suggestive 
truth, that the sublime is always mysterious or unexplained, in 
large part. That which man seems to himself wholly to compre- 
hend, no longer appears worthy of admiration on account of 
its sublimity. For the man of science who is petty and devoted 
chiefly to the observation and description of details of fact, 
without a superior interest in the hidden causes and undiscov- 
ered laws, nothing either in nature or in art is likely to ap- 
pear sublime. But to him who constantly bears in mind the 



THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY 413 

magnitude and the mystery of Nature, the sentiments and 
ideas appropriate to the sublimely beautiful are never far 
away. 

In the beauty which is chiefly characterized by Grace, the 
conception of motion is always either obviously prominent, or 
really dominant, although in a concealed way. This kind of 
beauty, therefore, either suggests or actually illustrates that 
easy and joyful movement along lines of least resistance, which 
is significant of abounding life. Thus we feel ourselves en- 
titled to speak of the graceful lines, or shapes, of objects which, 
like buildings and statues, cannot move. They suggest, how- 
ever, such easy and joyful movement as is brought to pass by 
the indwelling forces of life. Graceful melodies and poetical 
compositions characterized by this kind of beauty do actually 
move; they change in the succession of time, and in rhythmic 
fashion, the positions of their elements in pitch or, also in 
the articulate word with its burden of feeling and idea. The 
contrasted kind of beauty is suggestive of vigor and strength, 
which overcomes with endurance and perhaps with pain, the 
obstacles to movement of any kind which are embedded in 
the environment of human life and in the structure of every 
material organism. For if we must " get there " somehow, and 
cannot do it by easy and joyful movements; then we must 
turn angles and take, not the curved line of beauty but the 
even more beautiful line (if the truth of life be clearly under- 
stood) of consecrated toil. Besides, in works of art which 
depict the rugged and scarred aspects of nature, or the rude 
physical surroundings as moulded by the common man for 
himself, or the human form bent and ploughed and feruled 
by contention with physical forces, there is an expression of, 
and an appeal to, another side of the spiritual life which has 
a beauty of its own. The statues of Praxiteles and the peas- 
ants of Millet are both beautiful — each in their own way. The 
highest example of this kind of beauty is the human form, 
either in such pose as indicates a fullness of physical well- 



414 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

being, or in such action as suggests cultivated and kindly 
feeling as its motive. The risk in the art which strives to depict 
the perfection of this kind of beauty is that of making mere 
gracefulness, as a matter of pride in its possessor and of sensu- 
ous longing, the minister to luxury, effeminacy, and even lust. 
In this respect nature sets to art an example, by refraining 
from so debasing its ideal. Just to be beautiful in this way is 
not, of itself, a worthy sesthetical ideal for a self-conscious and 
self -determining mind. 

Certain objects, or groupings of objects, or series of occur- 
rences, which cannot fitly be called either sublime or graceful, 
excite sesthetical feeling because of the symmetrical character 
of the composition, or sequence, of their parts. This kind of 
beauty is that which we have classified as the beauty of the 
Orderly or Harmonious. All compositions, whether products 
of nature or of art, when regarded as compositions, must pos- 
sess more or less of this kind of beauty. Under this ideal 
influence the mind regards the various beautiful landscapes as 
scenes, whether their parts are selected and synthesized by the 
eye's looking out upon nature, or by the artist who is always 
alert in his search for materials for a true picture. In carv- 
ing a statue, in constructing a building, in composing a piece 
of music or a poem, there must be regard had to order, pro- 
portion, balance, harmony, and other similar qualities. Those 
musical compositions, for example, which make upon the lover 
of music the impression that the tremendous and complex 
sounds called forth might just as well be arranged in any other 
than their actual order, can scarcely expect to endure in the 
sesthetical admiration of future generations when placed beside 
the classical masters of this divine art. 

This species of sesthetical feeling is excited by the percep- 
tion or mental representation of proportion, balance of parts, 
and similar forms of the expression given to one ideal, in con- 
trol over numerous elements. The imagination seizes with a 
pleasure which is more than merely sensuous, and which has 



THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY 415 

the qualities belonging to all genuine sesthetical appreciation, 
upon the unity which a plan brings to numerous factors of 
varying sizes and kinds. Coupled with this, however, there is 
undoubtedly a sensuous element. For the effect of combina- 
tions of the dissimilar, and repetitions of the similar, is to 
make more easy and successful the grasp of imagination and 
thought. When arranged under the rules which are followed 
for the construction of beautiful objects of this species, details 
do not need to be slowly and painfully mastered, as details, in 
order to appreciate their beauty in combination. They have 
this beauty, indeed, not altogether or chiefly in themselves; but 
as growing out of the relations in which they are made to 
stand to one another as parts of an orderly, planful, and har- 
monious whole. The secret of our appreciation for this kind of 
beauty is thus revealed. Like all the sesthetical feeling which 
critics bestow upon the form of the object, it is not mere and 
dead form — as though any such thing could be; it is the life 
that shapes and shines through the form which is greeted and 
recognized as worthy of admiration and respect. The object 
reveals the triumph of reason and rational will over unorgan- 
ized material; and the self-conscious and self-determining 
mind of man recognizes at this triumph with a kind of sympa- 
thetic joy. Therefore, this kind of the beautiful, too, is an 
appeal made by the spiritual characteristics of the object to 
the kindred spirit of the subject of assthetical sentiment and 
judgment. 

It is easy to understand, then, what are the risks of failure 
and revulsion which lie in the path of this particular kind of 
art-work. They are chiefly the risks of a wearisome monotony, 
or a relatively spiritless compliance with conventional rules 
for the too precise ordering of artistic achievement. In nature, 
indeed, life follows law; and all varieties of beautiful forms 
yield secret or manifest obedience to gravity, sunshine, and 
various kinds of physical and chemical energies. In its most 
hidden working this life which shapes things, while not dis- 



416 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

obedient to " the heavenly vision/' does not attempt to loose 
itself from the bonds of earth. But in nature, to the eye which 
penetrates her secrets and is clarified by pure feeling, rather 
than suffused with morbid sentimentality, there is no monoto- 
nous conformity to form for form's sake. There is, the rather, 
infinite variety given to the formal expression of every species 
of life. In using the word life here, we do not wish to confine 
it to its proper biological use. For the statement is as true 
of crystals as it is of animals, of gems as it is of flowers. But 
no natural objects are more strictly and definitely ordered than 
is the shaping of crystals and of gems; but each kind has its 
own beauty, and even the individuals of each may reveal some 
particular kind of charm. While, as to the larger combinations 
of natural objects, the scenes arranged by Nature when unin- 
terf ered with by man, there is no such thing as an ugly or 
disagreeable monotony. 

The human mind, however, finds relief from those aspects 
and experiences which breed the oppressive sense of excessive 
sameness or conventionality, in breaking loose as it falsely 
imagines — from law and in realizing its own inherent rights 
in the joy of the wild. So it is with human sesthetical experi- 
ence; and with the objects which minister to this experience. 
For there is a beauty of the Luxuriant and the Wild. And the 
feeling for this kind of the beautiful is that which naturally 
and fitly belongs to a varied and superabounding life. In order 
to arouse this feeling, the object, whether in nature or in art, 
must suggest enough and to spare of indwelling spiritual 
energy. In its larger and more impressive natural exhibitions, 
this species — the luxuriant and wildly beautiful — has certain 
features akin to those of the sublime. But there is a lack of 
that confidence in the supremacy of reason, and that respect 
for the law-abiding, which belongs to the beauty of sublimity. 
The rugged and desolate mountain side, the earthquake shock, 
the volcanic eruption, may seem to the mind of the observer 
to have title to either one of these kinds of beauty, according 



THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY 41? 

to his point of view. But a mixture of terror and even of re- 
pulsion is likely in the one case, to take the place of feelings 
of awe and even of worshipful reverence in the other. The 
Titans, godlike in strength, and rejoicing in its exercise, but 
without a godlike pity or reserve, are made responsible by un- 
taught imagination, for the grandly wild: Divine Season, in 
control of boundless might, is suggested by reflective thinking, 
as the author of the awfully sublime. 

The aesthetical feeling aroused by this kind of beauty is at 
its purest and best in the presence of such natural objects as 
tropical forests or gardens; and in such objects of art as those 
buildings, carvings, paintings, poems, where form and color 
seem to have escaped from all the restraints of convention, and 
to have " run wild " without, however, overstepping too far 
the limits of their vital forces and due relations in the effort to 
throw off all external constraint. In furniture, dress, and 
daily occupations and companionships, the mind which is sensi- 
tive to ssthetical interests and considerations, apart from all 
craving for the unlawful indulgence of appetite and lust, takes 
a real and legitimate satisfaction in occasional breaks with the 
slavery of routine, the monotony of convention. In the devel- 
opment of art, too, the epoch-making masters and schools have 
generally been characterized by a revolt against the existing 
regulations and dicta of the critics. What is called order, and 
is therefore ordered for compliance with by every beauty -loving 
spirit, has come to seem oppressive and even irrational and 
ugly — at least in part. Then, the indwelling life breaks beyond 
the bounds of the ordinary; it roves and revels in its newly 
found freedom. 

It is at once evident that the last two kinds of beauty, and 
the corresponding a?sthetical attitudes toward their objects, 
are complementary, if not contradictory. In true art, as in 
nature considered from the a?sthetical point of view, they are 
complementary rather than essentially contradictory. Work 
should be followed by play; the expenditure of the vital 



418 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

energies should not be always ordered along the same monoto- 
nous lines. This is the truth of physiology. And the result- 
ing aesthetical truth is, that the full and complete life of the 
spirit requires both of these two kinds of expression. In gen- 
eral, life should be carefully ordered and therefore engaged 
in the repetition of the same energies. It should be directed by 
intelligent will toward the arrangement and repetition of the 
component factors of its work. But at times, it should have the 
more unrestrained joy of throwing off — what may become a 
burden and a source of ugliness and inefficiency — the conscious 
compliance with conventional rules for being merely alive and 
for doing nothing but work. That there is sesthetical as well as 
ethical risk connected with the appreciation of this kind of 
beauty, scarcely needs argument. As the excess of order tends 
to the restriction of development and the slavery of convention 
in art and in life; so does the excessive love of the beauty of 
the luxuriant and the wild tend toward offensive savagism and 
immoral indecency. The Bohemian has its place in the spirit 
of beauty; but its habitual devotee is sure to lose most of the 
genuinely sesthetical elements of life and art in the froth and 
mire of selfishness and sensuousness. 

There are many things, both in nature and in art, which 
do not seem to fall easily under any of the four kinds of the 
beautiful whose dominating characteristics have already been 
described. Yet, if we deny all beauty to them, we greatly 
diminish the scope and the content of human sesthetical experi- 
ence. We have called this kind of beauty, that of the Pretty, 
or the Handsome. That these terms designate an inferior class 
of objects and a correspondingly lowered response to them in 
the form of genuinely gesthetical sentiments and judgments, 
there seems to be no doubt. But one should not be disposed 
habitually to use these words with a half-concealed contempt. 
For pretty things and handsome animals and human beings 
play an important part in ministering to the joy and cultivation 
of human life, on its sesthetical side. Nature is full of them, is, 



THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY 419 

indeed, largely made up of them. Most of the objects produced 
in all kinds of art, if they can make any claim to beauty at 
all, would have to be assigned to this fifth and lowest class. 
They are not sublime, or especially graceful; neither are they 
patterned after ideals of harmony or of the luxuriant and the 
wild. But they may give a certain unselfish pleasure. The 
uninstructed lover of nature is interested in this way, in al- 
most all natural objects; the common people appreciate, though 
not with really good taste or cultivated judgment, such objects 
when produced by the various kinds of artisanship. Many of 
them have more or less of beauty, or of the semblance of 
beauty in them. But of what kind is their beauty ? Let us call 
it: "just the being pretty or handsome." 

The beauty of prettiness stands, as respects the sentiments 
and the activities which it calls forth, at the other extreme 
from the beauty of the sublime. In this kind of beauty, the 
object must be brought near the eye, if it have visible shape; 
and a certain minuteness of attention must be given to the 
delicacy and skill involved in its structure. The massive feel- 
ings of awe, and that sort of quasi-moral respect, which char- 
acterize the sublime are wanting in all such cases. And if the 
mere prettiness of the object is too conspicuous, or is secured 
at the expense of the other qualifications necessary to every 
beautiful object, it may even excite some slight feeling of that 
contempt to which weakness invariably tempts the vigorous 
mind. Since the object does not appear as a species of con- 
duct, the modifying feelings of compassion, or pity, or even 
sympathy, are not likely to be aroused. The popular airs, 
and songs, and even the popular poems, where they are not 
positively vulgar or immoral, belong for the most part to this 
class. Amongst so-called civilized peoples, they have not the 
seriousness, simplicity, and instinctive beauty which belongs 
to almost all the art-objects of savage peoples. "What lover of 
genuine beauty does not feel compelled to confess that the pot- 
tery of these peoples, the decorations of their utensils and 



420 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

clothing, their songs, etc., are aesthetically far superior to much 
which finds favor in the modern department store or upon the 
modern vaudeville stage? 

That the relatively unimportant natural structures have a 
beauty of their own, needs no proof for one who has habitually 
studied them with a trained eye and an appreciative mind. No 
surfaces decorated in patterns of many colors and geometrical 
shapes by human skill surpass the wings of the most insignifi- 
cant beetle; no lace-work from any convent or factory equals 
in delicacy the web of the common spider or the thread spun 
by the silk-worm. The blades of grasses and of grains, and the 
sand or soil men tread under foot, are constructed with a won- 
derful regard for variety in unity, for proportion and order, 
but with freedom to evolve an infinite number of differences in 
details. In that sympathy with nature which is so highly 
characteristic of Japanese art, worm-eaten surfaces, crooked 
and gnarled branches, grotesquely shaped stones and minerals, 
are esteemed to possess in more abundant measure the character- 
istics which the human spirit should appreciate as beautiful 
and worshipful when wrought into her products by the Spirit 
of Nature. All this sesthetical sentiment is confirmatory of the 
view for which we have been contending. Any object in order 
to be considered beautiful, must appear to the human mind 
as repealing some traits "kindred with itself, of an ideally 
worthy spiritual life. The same thing is true, although — con- 
fessedly — in inferior degrees, of all those objects of art which 
can establish an acceptable claim to the beauty of prettiness, 
of the petite, because they exhibit the result of painstaking 
human skill. The beauty by which they are characterized is 
indeed of a " delicate, diminutive, or inferior kind " ; but it pos- 
sesses, although in diminished degree, some of essentially the 
same characteristics as those which belong to the other and 
higher types of beauty. These objects have in them a pinch 
of the same salt, a modicum of the same universal life. 

There is no other department of philosophy in which the 



THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY 421 

conclusions of reflective thinking have so little of the compel- 
ling quality which investigation by scientific methods imparts 
as in the Department of so-called ^Esthetics. The philosophy of 
the beautiful ends in a sort of rational faith rather than in a 
system of reasoned conclusions. This fact is due, in an un- 
avoidable way, to the very nature of the objects studied; and 
to the affective or emotional results which such objects produce 
within the self-conscious and self-determining mind of man. 
These emotional and intellectual effects, as they appear in con- 
sciousness, however, are facts of no transitory and restricted 
importance. They are continuous, abiding, and universal, 
throughout the history of the human race. It is possible to 
trace — not, indeed, to their first sources but to relatively simple 
forms — the development of the particular arts and of the sub- 
divisions of these arts. But all the various attempts which 
have been made to account by a theory of evolution for the 
essential psychical elements and persistent types of man's 
aesthetical consciousness are wholly artificial and unsatisfactory. 
The nature of the savage, or of the mythical primitive man 
(so far as anything is known about primitive man), in respect 
of these elements and aspects, has always been the same as our 
own in this day of so largely misplaced aesthetical pride and 
self-conceit. For in truth, human nature is as essentially 
aesthetical as it is essentially moral and religious. Man has, 
therefore, always recognized beauty as something worthy of 
appreciation and of artistic striving. Still further, while 
there always has been, is now, and probably — it is to be hoped, 
certainly — will be, wide differences of opinion and practice, in 
aesthetics as in ethics and in religion; essentially the same 
vital and spiritual characteristics which he has thought to 
recognize in certain objects have always moved him to admir- 
ing appreciation and to artistic endeavor. The important philo- 
sophical, or metaphysical, truth is this: The race has the faith 
that Beauty is objective. Or, to say the same thing, in other 
language : The aesthetical ideals which the human mind appre- 



422 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ciates and even worships are confidently believed to be fol- 
lowed in the very structure of real Things. In a large way, 
Nature, or the Being of the World, expresses and appreciates 
man's Ideal of Beauty. 

It is, of course, true that by no means every thing in the 
world of nature is considered by every observer to possess the 
characteristics of beauty. Material things, in general, do not 
appear to man to be under the same obligation to be beautiful 
as that under which conscious selves appear, to be moral. 
Some things, indeed, seem to most people to be positively ugly, 
or even repulsively so; while most natural objects are to the 
multitude of those who use them, at best indifferent as respects 
any claim to the special characteristics of beauty. Are not 
toads, and snakes, and dead branches, and dry leaves after the 
autumn-colors have faded, either distasteful or quite lacking in 
positive charm? That depends upon the individual's point 
of view and limited associations. Philosophy, most assuredly, 
cannot solve the problem of the ugly in Nature, if it sets out 
with the assumption that Nature, in order to be altogether 
beautiful, ought to fashion every object from her hand so as 
to afford to everybody a measure of sensuous enjoyment; or 
that she ought so to restrict her forces as never to do damage 
to the economic or sanitary interests of any individual or com- 
munity of individuals. But such, in fact, is not the World's 
way of being either beautiful or beneficent. And there is abun- 
dant reason to think that, if it were her way, Nature could not 
produce, or elicit and develope, in man the appreciation and ex- 
pression of the really noblest and most worthy of sesthetical 
ideals. Granted, that the human mind cannot perfectly solve 
in any way the seeming presence of so much in the production 
of nature that offends its aesthetical sentiments. Neither science 
nor philosophy can solve any of the problems offered by the 
Universe at large, in a perfectly satisfactory way. The more, 
however, is known of natural laws, the more natural objects 
and natural processes are studied with judgment and insight; 



THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY 423 

the more of a real and grand, as well as of a delicate and ex- 
quisite beauty is revealed in the Being of the World. And 
finally, the mind seems warranted in believing that there is 
nothing made or done by Xature which, however indifferent 

or ngly it may appear from some points of view, may not 
claim to be considered positively beautiful, with some one of 
the various kinds of beauty, from other points of view. That 
natural forces, at the same time and in the same objects or 
processes, should be both sublime and pretty, both obviously 
orderly and almost oppressively luxuriant and wild, would be 
as really impossible for the human spirit to appreciate, as it 
is apparently impossible for Xature to perform. 

As we observe the "World on the largest scale, and reflect 
more profoundly upon our observations, from the aesthetical 
point of view, we learn the lesson which science habitually 
teaches : — that we are dealing with a vast, and in many re- 
spects incomprehensible system. In this system what appears 
to men as bad and ugly, from the point of view of their sensitive 
natures or of their economical interests, is generally an essential 
part of the sublimity, grandeur, harmony, and super-abound- 
ing life, which belong to the Totality of the Being of the World. 
The Spirit of Beauty, in the larger meanings and uses of the 
beautiful, is possessed by that Reality, whose essential character- 
istics are revealed, not to science alone, but also to the moral, 
artistic, and religious nature of humanity. This sesthetical 
postulate, or article of faith, is based upon what seem to be 
facts of experience. Every beautiful object, whatever be the 
hind of beauty which it especially emphasizes and represents, 
is beautiful because it suggests in a concrete way some one or 
more of the characteristics of an ideal spiritual Life. 

This postulate, or article of faith, may be proved — so far 
as the word proof is applicable to the subject — by all that 
has thus far been said as to the nature of testhetical conscious- 
ness, of the characteristics of beautiful objects, and of the 
kinds of beauty, as presented in nature and in the arts. Some 



424 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

of these reasons may properly now be restated and summarized 
under the following four heads: (1) All the forms of art, 
so far as the plasticity of the material they employ and the 
economic conditions and utilitarian uses of their product will 
permit, do represent and express some form of an ideal spiritual 
Life. According to the particular form of the spiritual ideal 
which they succeed in following is the kind of sesthetical sen- 
timent and approving judgment which they call forth. Art 
concretely embodies the Spirit of Beauty so as to appeal to the 
spirit in man which appreciates the beautiful. (2) This 
theory explains why Tragedy is the highest form of art. The 
tragic idea, and the appeal to its appropriate sentiments, 
whether set forth in sculpture, painting, music, poetry, or 
prose dramatic literature, is found in almost all the greater 
and more highly appreciated products of art. The verdict of 
the world's best artistic judgment runs this way. Struggle 
against difficulties, scorning of pain, self-sacrificing affection, 
the often baffled but final triumph of justice, human peni- 
tence and pity, and Divine pity and grace, find their expres- 
sion through the tragic in art. But these are all ideas and 
sentiments which fall under the most heroic spiritual activi- 
ties and which correspond to the supreme and profoundly sat- 
isfying ideals of spiritual Life. (3) The persistent and ra- 
tional determination of mankind not to regard its cesthetical 
sentiments and judgments as purely subjective, but to ground 
them in Eeality, cannot be disregarded. This determination 
is both cause and result of the belief that all the forms and 
kinds of beauty have their ground and ultimate explanation 
in a Universal Spiritual Life. (4) The World, when regarded 
from the aesthetical, as from every other point of view, is seen 
to be undergoing a process of development. It is, at least in 
many respects, and so far as its processes are open to human 
research, coming to be more and more beautiful; and therefore 
more and more satisfactory to man's sesthetical ideals. This 
evolution itself is of all conceivable natural things or proc- 



THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY 425 

esses, the most awfully and mysteriously sublime. It is a de- 
velopment characterized by order 1 and harmony and grace, 
and by exquisite workmanship in details; but it is also char- 
acterized by rigor, severity, and luxuriant wildness in parts. 
It has the marks of a spiritual process, of a vast march onward 
that is compelled, and shaped or more gently urged, by the 
Power of an indwelling Spiritual Life. 

The treatment given by philosophy to the ideals of humanity 
is not satisfied without making the attempt somehow in 
Reality to unify them all. We do not anticipate unduly this 
attempt when we call attention at this point to the intimate 
relation between man's assthetical and his moral ideals and 
development. It has already been said that the two cannot 
be identified. To accomplish this identification would impov- 
erish human nature and would weaken and degrade man's 
conception of the Being of the World. But the intimacy of 
the relation may be made clear by the following, among other 
considerations. There is, both in theory and in practice, an 
intimate and fairly constant relation between man's sesthet- 
ical and his moral development. This truth is evinced by the 
following among other classes of facts. Reference has already 
(p. 366f.) been made to the fact, that there are sentiments and 
judgments, approving or condemning, which men universally 
express toward certain forms of conduct, but which may be, 
with about equal propriety, considered from the sesthetical 
point of view. The existence and the behavior of things may 
be beautiful, or indifferent as regards beauty, or positively 
ugly. But unless things are more completely personified and 
endowed with moral feelings and with some apprehension of 
moral ideals than science permits, neither their nature nor 
their behavior can be judged as coming under ethical cate- 
gories. For Things are self-like ; but they are not such Selves as 
are self-conscious and self -determining minds. On the con- 
trary, the nature and the behavior of men fall, of necessity, 
under both classes of categories. Men may be both moral or 



426 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

immoral, and also beautiful or ugly. Heroic deeds of human 
courage, fidelity, endurance of pain and of loss in the pursuit 
of noble ideals, are the subject-matter of the most effective 
forms of the poetic and dramatic arts. Examples of this are 
the master-pieces of literature, such as the Antigone of Soph- 
ocles, the Book of Job, the Inferno of Dante, the King Lear 
of Shakespeare, the Paradise Lost of Milton, the Eaust of 
Goethe. In all these, and in all similar cases, however, the 
characters of the drama and the treatment given to them by 
the artist are spontaneously and inevitably passed upon from 
the point of view which regards their fidelity to moral ideals. 
The deeds depicted in this form of art may excite a salutary 
revolt and disgust, or feelings of penitence, pity, and sympa- 
thy, which are neither exclusively ethical nor exclusively ses- 
thetical; but which are both, and about equally. 

This mingling of ethical and aasthetical experience bears 
witness to the truth that immorality, if it is brought before 
the mind in such form that its true moral character is dis- 
cerned, is also distasteful to the assthetical consciousness, when 
the latter is placed in its own purer and higher points of 
view. But the general fact is particularly obvious as respects 
certain vices, like cowardice, meanness, cruelty, unfaithfulness, 
and other similar departures from the ideal of a noble man- 
hood. If it is objected that much in the plastic and pictorial 
arts, and especially in literature (above all, in drama, poetry, 
and the novel), which is undoubtedly beautiful, is also, as 
undoubtedly, either positively immoral or of immoral tend- 
ency, the objection must be admitted to be true in fact. 
But it misses the true point of the argument. It is true of 
religion, too, that much irrational belief, degrading supersti- 
tion, and cruel and immoral practice, have grown out of the 
most profound, permanent and universal religious impulses 
and ideas. In both classes of intimate relations between the 
sesthetical and the other controlling ideals, the seeming dis- 
crepancies and contradictions depend chiefly upon mistaken 



THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY 427 

points of view. The courage of the murderer, quoad courage, 
is virtuous; the beauty which nature or art gives to forms and 
relations that excite and minister to deeds of violence or lust, 
is beautiful indeed. But change the motive as discerned in 
the one case, and the attitude of either artist or observer toward 
the object; then the whole transaction changes its real aesthet- 
ical character and value. In order to remain beautiful, the 
nude in the plastic and pictorial arts, or the lifelikeness and 
charm of the drama, the poem, or the novel, must not appear 
to lend itself to the ministry of lust. The moment the bounds 
of either form of obligation are overstepped (and these bounds 
are different in different communities, at different times, and 
under changing social conditions; and are often matters for 
honest differences of opinion), the product becomes both ugly 
and immoral when viewed in the clearer light of the aesthet- 
ically and ethically perfect Ideal. 

That men who are great in art are by no means always con- 
spicuous for virtue is a fact which offers no objection to our 
theory. The psychological unity of the individual Self, and 
the spiritual unity of the race, are indeed such that neither 
the individual nor society can develope aesthetically or morally 
with an exclusive regard to either one of these supreme inter- 
ests. But if the question be raised as to how either one may be 
temporarily subjected to a deliberate disregard of the other, 
the answer is to be found in the weakness and limitations of 
human nature. How can a human soul unite such diverse 
qualities as an exquisite and sure appreciation of what is beau- 
tiful, in many of the qualities and kinds of real beauty, with 
dullness of intellect or hardness of heart toward important 
moral interests ? It is just this kind of unifying of discordant 
and contrary sentiments, judgments and practices, which every 
self-conscious and self-determining mind does actually effect. 
And while, on the one hand, the so-called " artistic tempera- 
ment " must often be charged with much of this vain struggle 
to make a harmonious totality out of a character and a life 



428 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

that is swerved from the ideal of spiritual perfection by ex- 
cessive devotion to some one of its component ideals; it must 
also be remembered that not a few of the greatest artists and 
lovers of beauty have, like Plato and the supreme Leader of 
men toward the religious ideal, recognized both beauty and 
righteousness as not interchangeable but related forms of that 
which is ideally Good. 

The intimate relation which exists between the ideals of 
beauty and the ideals of religion will appear more clearly in 
subsequent chapters. It will then be discovered that some of 
the most productive sources of religious experience arise in the 
aasthetical sentiments and ideas. This is most conspicuously 
true of the feeling of the sublime. Indeed, when combined 
with the allied or identical feelings for the mysterious and 
incomprehensible, it is found that man's attitude toward the 
sublimely beautiful is perhaps the chief source of his nobler 
religious experiences and of his higher religious developments. 
But the sentiments and beliefs of religion are, in only less 
degree, called out by the artistic harmony, freedom of super- 
abounding life, and technical skill, with which the Spirit that 
is in Nature produces its objects and brings them before the 
appreciative spirit of man. These qualities of Divinity religion 
recognizes, in its earlier developments, in the form of nature- 
worship ; just as the more definitively ethical qualities of Divin- 
ity are recognized in the form of ancestor-worship. 

The part which the influence of gesthetical ideals plays in 
the development of the individual and of society cannot safely 
be neglected; it can scarcely be overestimated. As said Pro- 
fessor Everett (Poetry, Comedy, and Duty, p. 43f.) : "There 
are few who would not recognize the fact that the dying out 
of the sense of beauty from any life is a real loss. There are 
few who do not realize that the enjoyment of beauty is one 
of the normal functions of the soul and that it cannot fail 
without disturbing the integrity of the life." The love of 
the beautiful, not as affording sensuous gratification to the 



THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY 429 

individual but as having a real and universal worth, and a 
certain worshipful attitude toward beauty, when properly cul- 
tivated, make man morally better by bringing him nearer 
to the ideal of a perfect spiritual life. This truth applies 
even to manners and morals of the so-called practical sort. 
The true gentleman must be something of an artist in mat- 
ters of conduct. The purer happiness and the higher useful- 
ness of any life depends in no small degree upon the genuine 
sesthetical culture which it receives. And all so-called "lib- 
eral culture" should make provision for stirring and direct- 
ing an appreciation of the beautiful in nature and in art. 

But for reflective thinking and for philosophical system, this 
is the supremely important truth which follows upon a study 
of man's sesthetical experience and sesthetical development. 
The appreciation and interpretation of the World, — its Nature, 
as science would say, its real Being, as the uncouth language 
of metaphysics might express its problem, — and also of the 
meaning and goal of human life, cannot be gained in the 
highest degree, without aesthetical cultivation. That Nature, 
as man's environment and man's Mother and foster-mother, is 
really beautiful, and has made her child to appreciate and 
judge the worth of beauty, is by no means the most insignifi- 
cant of the several voices which bear virtues to the Spirit 
that reveals itself as immanent and controlling in the system 
of selves and of things. 



CHAPTER XX 

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: ITS ORIGIN IN EXPERIENCE 

That man should become a religious being is made neces- 
sary both by his constitution and by his physical and social 
environment. His spiritual nature, whether it was received 
at the beginning as an endowment or was achieved by many 
thousands of years of struggle upward, demands the satisfac- 
tions of religion on the emotional and practical as well as on 
the more purely intellectual side. The essential and supreme 
thing about Selfhood is the development of a self-conscious 
and self-determining mind. This mind seeks and finds, and 
still again seeks and finds, more and more seemingly valid 
explanations of its own nature and of that larger Nature in 
whose lap it is born and at whose bosom it is nourished and 
cherished. But as self-conscious and self-determining, it feels 
the pressure and recognizes the obligations of ethical and 3es- 
thetical impulses, sentiments, and ideals. Thus man's ra- 
tional being — in the larger and fuller meaning of the word 
" rational " — requires him, not only to regard the Being of the 
World as a system of self-like beings, standing in more or less 
intelligible relations to himself and to one another, but also 
to endow this Being with some greater measure, however hid- 
den and mysterious in places, of those spiritual qualities which 
he feels himself compelled to appreciate, to admire, and to imir 
tate. In a word, man gives to Nature a Spirit, after the pat- 
tern of, and yet superior to, the spirit which he consciously 
recognizes himself to be. Thus the fundamental belief of 
religion is made inevitable. 

Why should not, then, his attitude toward this Universal 
Spirit be one of fear mingled with desire for friendly com- 
munion? Why should it not include the sense of mystery tem- 

430 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 431 

pered by the longing to know; the appreciation for the mor- 
ally sublime and the sublimely beautiful held in reserve or 
disturbed by the doubt of ignorance; the emotions of filial 
affection, trust, and obedience, darkened, delayed, and 
thwarted, but finally triumphing over the obstacles of unrea- 
son and temptation to wrong-doing? Such is the religious 
attitude of the human spirit toward the Being of the World. 
Therefore, to call it natural is not to do it dishonor; it is, the 
rather, to do honor to the Spirit, which is immanent in Na- 
ture as well as in the spirit of man. 

When speaking of " the religious consciousness," however, 
it must not be expected to find, on analyzing it, any wholly 
new factors or forms of conscious activity, to which attention 
has not already been directed. Eeligion is not like a mansard 
roof added, in compliance with a new architectural taste or 
custom, to an old-fashioned building of a quite different ar- 
chitectural style. As long as man has been a speaking, moral, 
and social being, so long has he been also a religious being. 
He has been all these — if, waiving all ill supported conjectures, 
we plant ourselves firmly on the facts of human history, so 
far as these facts are discoverable — so long as he has been a 
true Self, a real man. It is human, then, to be religious; 
and, on the contrary, it is as truly to lack something impor- 
tant in the human constitution, not to be religious, as it is to 
have no development of the conscious ethical and sesthetical 
experience. To show the origin of religious experience, it will 
therefore only be necessary to point out how all the various 
allied departments of human nature (if one may be pardoned 
so mechanical a term) contribute to that complex experience 
which constitutes the religious attitude toward the Being of 
the World. It will then follow as a matter of course that 
this experience requires its special and highly important place 
in any attempt at systematic philosophy. 1 

iThe discussions of the following three chapters, and all the 
quotations not otherwise credited, are taken from the author's 



432 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

" But what is religion ? arid By what marks are we to recog- 
nize the experience connoted by this term? Some brief and 
yet more precise determination of the sphere of historical and 
psychological research within which the investigation of the 
phenomena proceeds is surely needed at this point. For on 
the one hand, there is risk of framing too loose and indefinite 
a conception of the term religion, and so perhaps of identify- 
ing its sphere with the entire group of ethical and sesthetical 
beliefs, emotions, and ideas; or with the content of thought 
and opinion belonging to philosophy itself. While, on the 
other hand, a danger awaits the inquiry, from confining the 
examination to certain favored examples or types of religion, 
or from prematurely dividing religions into the lower and the 
higher; or into the wholly true and the wholly false. This 
last form of restricting the subject may amount in the end to 
something quite different from distinguishing between truth 
and half-truth, or between truth and falsehood, in any particu- 
lar religion. It may discourage the attempt to trace the de- 
velopment of the religious consciousness of humanity from 
lower to higher stages in the rationality of its conceptions 
and in the purity of its sentiments. And surely the use of the 
psychological and historical method will not permit, except 
in a modified way, the acceptance of Eucken's declaration that 
' he who concerns himself about religion's content of truth need 
not inquire into its darksome beginnings nor trace its tedious 
climbings upward, but may at once transport himself to its 
height. Since here the problem of its truth first attains a full 
clearness, and here first gains a compelling power/ " 

In its lowest terms and considered as universal with the 
race, that product of the self-conscious and self-determining 
mind of man which is called Beligion, in its effort to inter- 
pret the phenomena so as to satisfy certain rational impulses 
and demands, as well as to afford a rational basis for life, 

Philosophy of Religion, 2 vols. (New York, Charles Scribner's 
Sons, 1905). 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 433 

shows essentially the same results of the activities of the 
human intellect as those which are shown in ail other forms 
of allied human development. It may be summarized as fol- 
lows: "Religion is the belief in invisible superhuman powers 
(or a Power) which are (is) conceived of after the analogy 
of the human spirit; on which (whom) man regards himself 
as dependent for his well-being, and to which (whom) he is, 
at least in some sense responsible for his conduct; together 
with the feelings and practices which naturally follow from 
such a belief/' 

It has already been proved that all the physical and natural 
sciences recognize the more or less self-like character of the 
nature and behavior of the things with which they undertake 
to deal in their several special ways. Moreover, if these sci- 
ences recognize the real meaning of their more ulterior con- 
clusions in the form of species, laws, principles, and a course 
of development of a plan-full character toward some sort of 
goal; then they, of necessity, virtually assume the immanence 
of Mind in the system of Things. Indeed, the whole work of 
the particular sciences is a work of interpreting the phenom- 
ena in terms which have meaning only for self-conscious and 
self-determining beings, such as human beings have somehow 
come to be. 

But back of all this work of science lies the fundamental 
and — so far as it is possible to conceive of the subject at all — ■ 
the unchangeable nature of the human mind as evinced by 
the so-called categories, and by the principles of mental pro- 
cedure as pure logic and pure mathematics reveal those prin- 
ciples in terms of these sciences. The very nature of all knowl- 
edge, of knowledge as such, is a species of personifying. It 
is an attribution to Things of activities and relations, the 
complete nature and significance of which are known only in 
terms of the conscious recognition of the experience of the Self. 
All knowing is interpretation; and all interpretation must 
come down at the last upon the bed-rock laid by Nature in the 



434 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND KEALITY 

nature of the interpreter. The interpreter is the self-conscious 
and self-determining mind of man. The postulate, then, 
which saves all this work of interpretation, which is called 
" science/' from the yawning gulf of scepticism, is the assump- 
tion that the faith of reason in itself is grounded in a rational 
Universe. The rationality of Keality becomes in this way, at 
the same time the postulate, and also the more and more in- 
telligently conceived and irrevocably fixed conclusion, of all 
human knowledge; because it is both discovered by a critical 
theory of cognition and also demonstrated by all the scientific 
progress of all the particular sciences. 

Such a view explains the remarkable parity which history 
shows between the religious and the scientific development of 
the race. Keligion is not science, whatever one may choose 
to contend about the possibility of a science of religion. 
Neither is science, or scientific development alone, sufficient 
to originate or develope the religious experience. Indeed, this 
experience comes more largely and surely out of the ethical and 
sesthetical sentiments, beliefs, and ideals, as they are operative 
and co-operative in human society. Here also, — and, perhaps, 
here as nowhere else — great reformers and geniuses have given 
to the race the supremely important uplift to its spiritual life 
in the religions domain. But both religious belief and scien- 
tific acquisition have had this important thing in common; 
they have both tended more and more toward confidence in 
the essential Unity of the World, in the Oneness of the Source 
of the Inspiration, and of the Order, of all things and all 
selves, in spite of many seeming discrepancies, gaps, faults in 
the process, and even contradictions. 

Many of the same influences have operated upon both science 
and religion to compel them to their respective forms of faith 
regarding this conception of " unity" as applied to the Being 
of the World. But especially true has it been in the most re- 
cent times that the particular sciences have forced this con- 
ception upon religion in a somewhat startlingly new form. 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 435 

The invisible and superhuman agency in which religion be- 
lieves, be it one in complete harmony with Itself or be it 
divided between two or more different, if not contentious sources, 
has a much bigger and more complex sphere to fill and to con- 
trol than ever before. The philosophy of religion is there- 
fore compelled to conceive of its Object in a far grander and 
more inclusive and magnanimous way. But on the other hand, 
since it is the religious consciousness in which all the various 
ethical and aesthetical, and so the social and practical, demands 
of the human spirit mingle and culminate; religion has the 
right to expect of the particular sciences their support for a 
spiritual interpretation of the universe. Only by a harmony 
between the principles of science and the faiths of religion 
can the one nature of man be most fully expressed and satis- 
fied. Only in this way can the Oneness of the Universal 
Nature, whose child man is, be most satisfactorily expressed 
and completely understood. 

The various lower species of religion, such as spiritism in 
the form of Shamanism or in any of its other varied forms; 
or such as all the different polytheisms: or such as the higher 
species of Xature-worship, when it has partially escaped the 
degradation of spiritism and polytheism; or as Ancestor- 
worship in its ethically nobler beliefs and practices; — these 
are all doomed by the very nature of the intellectual progress 
of the race to give way before a spiritual Monotheism. That 
the Divine Being of the world must be conceived of, wor- 
shipped, and obeyed, as One, is as inevitable as is the growing 
certainty of the spiritual unity of the race; and of the Unity 
in Reality of all things and selves in this world. Xeither of 
these assumed unities can as yet be said to be a demonstrated 
truth, after the pattern of mathematics and the more exact 
of the empirical sciences. Perhaps, from the very nature of 
the case, neither of them, as they enter into the faith of re- 
ligion and into the kindred faith of science, ever will receive 
a demonstration of the kind which Kant called apodei-ctic; 



436 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

and which certain kinds of agnosticism require as a basis for 
knowledge. But the conviction that they are true is gaining 
evidence from the growth of every kind of human knowledge. 

It is, however, in the sentiments, conceptions, and ideals of 
92sthetical, but above all, of ethical consciousness (in the large 
meaning of the word ethical) that a spiritual Monism finds 
both its source, and its guarantee, as well as its motives for 
practical efficiency. For it is an historical fact that all the 
greater religions, and especially among them all, the Chris- 
tian religion, have come to regard the world-system of things 
and selves, when considered from the point of view of reflective 
thinking, as the manifestation of One perfect, indwelling 
Ethical Spirit. 

How this conclusion of the more highly developed religious 
experience of the race has come about, it is not our purpose at 
present to examine. Indeed, the examination belongs to the 
study of comparative religion, in its historical processes, rather 
than to systematic philosophy. But a brief survey of the ex- 
perience, in which the beliefs, sentiments and practical activi- 
ties of religion have their origin and justification is necessary 
to lay the psychological basis for any valid philosophy of re- 
ligion. 

Beginning with that which is most obscure and lowest, but 
not least powerful, we note certain impulsive and more purely 
emotional sources of religious experience. These obscure im- 
pulses and feelings do not afford conscious reasons or intel- 
lectual justifications for religious belief; but they operate 
none the less powerfully for all that. In this respect they are 
not unlike all the more basic and definitely psycho-physical 
functions of the Self, both as an organism and as a conscious 
mind. Of late, the phenomena of religious experience, when 
studied from the biological and economic points of view, have 
been thought to show in a marked degree the influence of the 
"instinct of self-preservation," so-called. This motive, so far 
as it exists at all and is effective in human religious experi- 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 437 

ence, is almost as complex and ill-defined an affair as is 
Schopenhauer's " will to live." But both terms — " the in- 
stinct of preservation " and " the will to live " — may, con- 
veniently enough and with considerable propriety, be used to 
cover a group of subtle and powerful psychical influences 
which compel man to the beliefs and practices of religion. 
The desire and the experienced need of protecting and cherish- 
ing the interests of a complex life is much greater and more in- 
tense in the case of man than in that of any of the lower 
animals. And as man more and more realizes his true Self, 
,/?nd so feels in an enlarged manner the natural impulse to 
protect it, and to employ " the will to live " in the interests 
of the higher life, these impulses blossom into the more intelli- 
gent and self-conscious form of a search for, and an increased 
evaluation of, the religious as well as the ethical and assthet- 
ical ideals. Thus religion springs and developes perennially 
out of the desire of man to " better himself." It is this 
" sense of unrest, the ceaseless longing for something else " 
(and better) "which is the general source of all desires and 
wishes," and u also the source of all endeavor and all prog- 
ress," in which some writers find the most primary and pow- 
erful impulse to religion. It was a suggestive saying of Hum- 
boldt : " All religion rests on a need of the soul ; we hope, we 
dread, because we wish." And the insatiable nature of human 
cravings, when once the mind and will of man have been roused 
to effort at attaining a full satisfaction for themselves, is un- 
doubtedly an exhaustless source of the religious life. There is, 
without doubt, quite truth enough in the pessimistic philosophy 
of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann to make it sure that such 
cravings can never be satisfied simply by improving the eco- 
nomic resources and utilitarian conditions of the race. 

No candid student of the phenomena of religious experience 
is now ready to accept as wholly true the ancient saying (at- 
tributed to Petronius) : " Fear first made the gods." But the 
emotion of fear is, especially in the earlier and wider forms 



438 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

of man's evolution of religion, an effective impulse. No 
other being has so many justifiable fears as has man; for no 
other has such a variety of interests which he knows to be 
subject momently to dangers from many sources. For the 
savage or unscientific man, the sources of most of these fears 
are largely unknown or wholly mysterious; for all men, they 
are either difficult of their own control, or even beyond all 
possibility of human control. Being unseen, they are of neces- 
sity attributed to spiritual agencies; for even when it is poi- 
sonous serpents, or violent winds, or tidal waves and volcanic 
eruptions, it is the spirit which is in the visible phenomena 
that accomplishes the harm. For the same reason, attacks 
from zymotic diseases, or those due to mal-nutrition, especially 
if they assume a pestilential form, are most naturally ascribed 
to gods who are, for some wholly unknown or half-suspected 
reason, angry with men. With these dreaded, invisible and 
spiritual agencies, therefore, man must keep on good terms, 
if he would live happily .or even live at all. 

But as said Spinoza : " There is no hope without fear, as 
there is no fear without hope." And if the gods or devils can 
be propitiated, then hope may take the place of fear. What is 
more significant and promising, however, on the side of hope, 
is the fact that genuine social feelings of the kindlier type 
may reasonably be cherished as between the invisible super- 
human spirits and the spirit of man. In very ancient times, 
and in many widely separated countries, these kindly social 
feelings between gods and men have been expressed and cul- 
tivated by the communal feast, and in other ways. In these 
social feelings Pfleiderer finds the most potent emotional fac- 
tors of Aryan religion. Many of the most ancient of the 
Vedic hymns express these feelings in no doubtful manner. 
In Japan to-day the deified ancestor is bound religiously to 
his living descendants by bonds of sentiment that are dis- 
tinguished chiefly by reverence and affection rather than fear. 
The dreaded cobra in India, the rattlesnake among certain 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 439 

tribes of the Redskins, the hideous idol among the Mexicans, 
and the ragged and dirty puppet among the Christians of 
Southern Europe, may represent that side of the divine being 
which awakens the kindlier domestic and social emotions. 

Of the more intellectual of the impulses in which religion 
finds the psychological causes of its origin and development, 
the chief is that curiosity to know, which is associated so in- 
separably with the feeling of dependence. We certainly cannot 
attribute man's chief interest in religion, as von Hartmann 
does, to a " disinterested observation of the heavenly phenom- 
ena and of their relations to earthly conditions." Yet something 
is to be said in favor of those writers who oppose to the deriva- 
tion of religion from feeling alone, the counter statement that 
intellectual curiosity, with its accompaniment of naive and in- 
stinctive metaphysics, is the very core and spring of man's 
personality, so far as his religious life is concerned. " In all 
stages of civilization," says one of these writers, " among all 
races of mankind, religious emotions are always aroused by 
the same inward impulse, the necessity for discerning a cause 
or author for every phenomenon or event." To place the in- 
tellectual before the emotional in this way may be a reversal 
of the order of nature; but on the other hand, without the in- 
fluence of intellectual curiosity and the spontaneous and na'ive 
positing of realities to act as causes in accounting for the 
changes in the phenomena experienced, not even the lowest 
form of religion known as a vague and unreflecting Spiritism 
could ever have arisen. Two considerations should be borne in 
mind in order to a better understanding of this subject. The 
human mind is to itself a mysterious being living in the midst 
of a mysterious environment. It is dependent for the realiza- 
tion of its interests upon the character of its reactions to this 
environment. In order to react aright it must know both it- 
self and its environment. There is therefore every reason in 
man's dependence upon nature to stimulate his curiosity re- 
specting its invisible and superhuman agencies. In the case of 



440 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

primitive or savage man this reason is greatly exaggerated by 
the fact that he has little or no conception of nature such as 
modern science cherishes, as an orderly system of interacting 
causes under the principles of continuity and uniformity. All 
the more reason, then, why he should believe in the causal 
action of the invisible and superhuman, and should seek to 
discover and interpret to his profit the modes of their opera- 
tion. 

" It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the intel- 
lectual curiosity of even the savage or primitive man is lim- 
ited to those events which he has reason most to hope for or 
to dread. A belief in creator gods, and the mixture of cos- 
mogonic myths and theories with religious beliefs and stories 
of the invisible powers or supernal deities, are found very low 
down, if not universally existent, in the religions of mankind. 

" All these impulsive and emotional sources of religion, when 
considered as co-operative, and even when supplemented by any 
number of similar sources, will not suffice to account for the 
nature of the object of religious belief; nor, indeed, do they 
tell us why any such object is in fact posited by the mind of 
man. Impulses and emotional disturbances do not of them- 
selves furnish the ideas of the religious experience; much less 
do they create the ideals of the higher forms of this experience. 
Such stimuli can only incite and prompt imagination and 
thought to do this work of creation. In a word, it is reason 
that must construct the Object of religious faith; and this act 
of construction must be based upon, and supported constantly 
by, the faith of reason in its power to reach Reality. We turn, 
therefore, to the study of the religious consciousness of man 
as rational and free, — as the experience of a self-conscious and 
self-determining mind." 

The confessedly vague terms, rational and rationality, with 
so much of freedom, and of the intellectual and emotional at- 
titudes toward scientific, moral, and sesthetical ideals, as they 
properly include, have already been defined with sufficient 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 441 

detail and clearness for our present purpose. In respect of 
those sources of religion which, have already been recognized, 
man differs in no essential respect, but only in variety and de- 
gree, from the lower animals. The fundamental and perma- 
nent difference has relation to the Object of his religious belief. 
The complex and lofty conception which becomes the goal and 
determines the course of man's religious experience cannot by 
any possibility get itself constructed within the consciousness 
of the lower animals. The reason for the failure of any 
species of the lower animals to be religious, as all men are 
religious, is then chiefly their lack of those rational activities 
which are necessary in order to make objective the grounds of 
the religious impulses and emotions. Only a human intellect 
and imagination could frame the conception of real but super- 
human spirits ; only a human conscience could locate the moral 
quality of conduct in relations of obligation and approbation 
(or their opposites) to these spirits; only human sesthetical 
and ethical sentiments and ideals, keeping pace with the 
growth of intellect and imagination, could develope that ideal 
of a perfect Ethical Spirit which is the culminating product 
of man's religious progress. In a word, only a Self, such as 
the human being is, but the lower animal is not, could achieve 
the religious attitude toward an infinite and absolute and 
morally perfect Other Self. This attitude, when made ra- 
tional, is the crowning achievement of humanity under the 
Divine Self-Eevelation. 

The metaphysical postulate which underlies and makes 
valid all man's rational activities is the reality of the object, 
in the cognitive judgment about which these activities termi- 
nate. This is as true in the sphere of religious experience as it 
is in all forms of complex human experience. As Kant points 
out, the nervus probandi of all the so-called arguments for the 
Being of God is the " ontological argument." But this is 
equally true of all kinds of argument, without distinction in 
the subjects about which the proof is sought and assumed to 



442 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

be found., The major premise, or assumption based upon the 
faith of human reason in itself, which underlies and supports 
all the conclusions with regard to the nature, the doings, and 
the relations of both things and selves, may therefore be stated 
in some such way as the following : " What is so connected 
with our experience of reality as that it is essential to explain 
this experience satisfactorily, is itself believed to be real." This 
assumption of man's " ontological consciousness," of his meta- 
physics whether naive or scientific, is the bed-rock which un- 
derlies all the pathways along which the human mind makes 
its excursions into the Being of the World. 

The false opinions, mistakes, and superstitions, which so 
cloud and pervert the judgments of savage and primitive man, 
and which linger on to the restriction and distorting of the 
religious creeds, institutions, and practices of the most en- 
lightened nations, are not essentially — that is, logically or 
metaphysically — different from the same workings of ontological 
consciousness in all other spheres. Eeligion has no monopoly 
of prejudice, error, and practical folly. The pathway along 
which the most exact sciences have moved to higher stages 
of evolution is strewn with the same kind of mental debris 
and wreckage. It is largely by correcting their mistakes that 
both religion and science rise to higher stages of knowledge 
and successful endeavor. Nor are the spirit in which, and the 
motives from which, they undertake their different tasks, alto- 
gether different. 

This procedure of the ontological consciousness in religion 
is perfectly natural; instead of being irrational, it is of the 
very essence of reason itself. It is precisely similar to the 
procedure of science in every form of its vast productivity 
and wonderful development, down to the present time. The 
invisible superhuman spirits are as necessary to the savage, in 
order to explain his experience, as the invisible atoms, or radio- 
active molecules, are necessary to explain the experience of the 
modern chemist or physicist. Who shall say with an entire 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 443 

confidence, as yet, that the one assumption is not as rational 
as the other ? Or, better : May not both ways of looking at 
Reality be sometime subsumed under some larger conception 
of the World's Unity? 

" It appears, then, that religious belief, for its form and 
development, and indeed for its very existence, can never be 
rendered independent of metaphysics. All religious experience 
implies an irresistible conviction of a commerce with Reality; 
it cannot arise without either a naive and instinctive, or a dis- 
ciplined and systematic exercise of the ontological conscious- 
ness. The cultivation of the so-called ontological conscious- 
ness has, therefore, an important influence on the religious 
evolution of humanity. In fact, the rational culture of any 
race, or epoch, has invariably been marked by schools of re- 
ligious philosophy and of theology; and these schools have 
profoundly influenced the religions of the time; — first of all, 
through the thoughtful few of the existing generation, and 
then through the large multitude of the less thoughtful and of 
the succeeding generations. In India, every important school 
of metaphysical philosophy was early represented; and every 
school has left its traces on the religious beliefs and practices 
of the people of India down to the present time. Everywhere, 
though not to the same extent, the influence of the great meta- 
physical thinkers of the race has continued over the religious 
beliefs, sentiments, and practices of the succeeding ages, in a 
most powerful way. The metaphysical speculations of the 
Eleatics and of the Sceptics influenced the religions of the 
Greek world : Plato and Aristotle powerfully moulded the re- 
ligious experience of the Middle Ages. 

" In vain are men exhorted to be satisfied with saying the same 
prayers and singing the same sacred songs; they continue to 
divide and subdivide their religions on ontological grounds. 
The importance of subtle and minute metaphysical distinctions 
in religious opinion is, indeed, often overestimated; the failure 
to recognize what is common to all, and to exercise charity with 



444 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

respect to differences of belief, has doubtless resulted in much 
loss to the religious life as an essentially spiritual and practical 
affair. But the history of man's religious development confirms 
what the psychology of the religious experience enables us 
the better to understand; — namely, that the Object of re- 
ligious faith and worship must ever be regarded as something 
about whose real Being man must unceasingly strive to know. 
A proposed belief in mere phenomena as divine, has about it 
characteristics so disturbing, that even its temporary holding 
tends to provoke the laughter with which our mind greets 
the discovery that the ghost which has awakened its fears is 
only, after all, existent in its own eye. It is never, then, any 
particular system of metaphysics which is the most dangerous 
opponent of religious faith. It is, the rather, the denial of 
all possible trustworthiness in religion to man's ontological 
consciousness. The fundamental error of dogmatic or scep- 
tical agnosticism, we have seen to be the assumption that the 
so-called categories, or constitutional forms of human cogni- 
tion, are inescapable limitations, if not the fruitful sources of 
illusion, for all human attempts at a knowledge of Eeality. 
Thus the grand result of the cosmic processes which terminate 
in man is a being whose crowning glory is to be the discoverer, 
critic, and self-convicted dupe, of his own rational nature. 
In a word, the claim to be rational stands self-condemned, as 
inherently self-contradictory and irrational. 

" This belief in reality, as it extends to the peculiarly re- 
ligious forms of belief, and has its genesis — so the theory of 
knowledge has taught us — in the experience of a self-active 
will opposed by, and in commerce with, other wills, cannot of 
itself give form or rational content to the conception of the 
Object of religious faith. It is the activity of man's imagina- 
tion and intellect which accomplishes this. It is by the com- 
bination of these so-called faculties of the mind that the ob- 
jects of all forms of religious belief and worship are more 
definitely shaped." 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 445 

As in all kinds of human experience which are influenced 
by ideals, so above all in religion, the function of Imagination 
is of primary and pre-eminent importance. This is true even 
when there is included under the term both the lighter and 
more illogical play of fancy, and also the more serious logical 
work of the creative imagination, as the latter is controlled 
by a stricter regard for the undoubted facts of experience 
and for the confessed limitations of human understanding. 
Indeed, no fixed line can be drawn between the two; — whether 
regard is had' chiefly to distinctions in the mental activity 
involved, or to distinctions in the characteristics of the prod- 
ucts resulting. 

In the same stages of civilization, therefore, we find the 
grotesque and grewsome divinities of unrestrained fancy and 
the " creator gods," or " heavenly powers," whose mental 
representation requires the higher and more strenuous activi- 
ties of imagination, existing side by side in the popular belief. 
The former are, indeed, the more popular and more sought 
after in the daily life of the average man. This is not so 
much because the worshippers are deficient in intellectual 
power to know better, as because the lesser divinities are of 
more utilitarian value and more intimate and constant con- 
cern. To know what devil or protecting deity can inflict or 
cure small-pox, or can help one kill his enemy or succeed in 
adultery and theft, is more immediately important than to 
know what kind of a god created the heavens and the earth. 
In the civilization of ancient Greece, where both intellect and 
imagination attained the power to achieve much which has 
never been surpassed, an almost aesthetically perfect mythology 
existed cotemporaneously with an elaborate religious philos- 
ophy. Plato regards the gods, of mythology as creatures of 
imagination; and Aristotle thinks that most of the state re- 
ligion is myth, due to anthropomorphic representations and 
justified only by political motives. But neither Plato, nor 
Aristotle, nor any modern thinker, can cultivate either sci- 



446 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ence, or philosophy, or religion, without trusting to the power 
of human imagination in its claim to represent the realities im- 
mediately known or indirectly implicated in human cognitive 
experience. If the self-conscious and self-determining mind 
were not endowed with creative imagination it could neither 
picture the Being of the World as science conceives of It, nor 
construct the image of God as monotheistic religion believes in 
Him. 

It has been customary in certain quarters to speak of pure 
imagination with a certain tone of contempt; and, on the con- 
trary, to praise the purity of freedom from imagination, of the 
intellectual processes of modern science. No such purity, how- 
ever, can possibly exist in the functions of either of these two 
allied and co-operative forms of man's cognitive faculty. The 
creative imagination, which is the highest and most important 
activity of the human mind in representing to itself the truths 
of reality, becomes relatively pure, only when it is freed from 
the limitations of concrete facts and particular examples, in 
order to depict general types or universal laws and principles. 
It is to the attaining of such freedom that the highest efforts 
of science are chiefly directed. But in attaining this kind of 
purity, the imagination stands in constant and special need 
of those intellectual processes which first secure a collection 
of accurately observed facts; and then require the exercise of 
caution and sanity and skill in the experimental testing of 
facts and in their logical arrangement and concatenation. Eep- 
resentation demands the purification of its products by 
thought; in order that either knowledge or a rational belief 
may be attained by the mind. For, on the one hand, the real 
world is not a heterogeneous assemblage or unordered series 
of occurrences and existences, to be taken note of as mere 
facts ; it is the rather, a construction in which ideas, and ideals, 
of law, order, and harmony, take a conspicuous part. It re- 
quires, therefore, the creative imagination of the observer, in 
order to apprehend and reconstruct it as it really is. But, on 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 447 

the other hand, this creative activity of imagination must 
freely and joyfully limit itself by intelligence touching the 
real beings, and natural occurrences and relations, of this same 
world. 

This relation of mutual assistance between imagination and 
thought is as true for religion as it is for science. Indeed, 
religion stands in special need of a process of separation and 
purification for the work which it calls upon the creative 
imagination to perform; and the chief reasons for this need 
are the following two: Its primary beliefs are essentially of 
the m-visible, the now-sensible, the somehow super-human, the 
Self that is other than myself. Moreover, the practical and 
emotional interests to which the work of the religious imagina- 
tion is committed are so immediate and pressing as the more 
easily to override the considerations upon which the scientific 
development of man lays such peculiar emphasis. Superstitious 
beliefs, born of unworthy and irrational hopes and fears and 
desires, have never been confined to religion. But, in religion, 
on account of its very nature, they have been most potent and 
difficult to modify or to remove. Hence, the necessity, but also 
the embarrassment and the delicacy, of the task of improving 
the work of imagination in the construction of an Object of 
religious belief which shall worthily fit in with the system of 
human experience, rationally regarded and, as far as possible, 
scientifically explained. 

" An essential part, therefore, of the thought-factor in man's 
religious life and development, consists in the application, to 
the Object of faith, of the psychological laws which control 
the explanation of all classes of experience. It scarcely need 
be said again that these laws always apply in the religious 
domain, in close and inseparable union with the beliefs of 
ontological consciousness. Experience must be explained — 
whether religious or otherwise — in accordance with the concep- 
tions and laws of ' efficient cause ' and of c final purpose/ 
For man knows himself as a will, self-determining in his pur- 



448 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

pose to realize ends; and he has no other way of constituting 
the being, or explaining the behavior, of the world of exist- 
ences outside himself, except that offered by the analogy of this 
knowledge of himself. Efficient causes, behaving according to 
ideas of order and consistency in the realization of ends, must 
be invoked to explain the world anthropomorphically (and 
such is man's only way of explanation), whether they are 
located in big things, or in little atoms, in mere things, or in 
men, or in the gods. All kinds of real beings, that seem to 
afford help in the explanation, are necessarily thought of, if 
thought of at all, under the conceptions and terms furnished 
by the same psychological laws. 

" It is, however, the business of intellect to criticize the proc- 
ess of anthropomorphizing, to prune it unceasingly and un- 
sparingly, and to force it without fear or favor, constantly 
to readjust itself to the growing experience of the race. This 
is not best done, either by relinquishing all hope of knowledge 
of Eeality, that it is and what it is, or by giving free rein to 
fancy in religion, under the false and fatal impression that 
science and religion may remain at peace with each other while 
retaining, not merely different but even conflicting and con- 
tradictory, views of the one world. This world is man's 
world; and the self-conscious and self-determining mind of 
man cannot remain in conflict with itself, whether as respects 
its intellectual or its practical interests. This same mind, 
therefore, acting as a creative imagination and as an intellect 
that seeks, under the psychological laws which all attempts to 
extend the sphere of human knowledge must perforce obey, to 
understand the grounds of its own experience; — this same 
mind constructs the Object of religious belief and worship. 

" But the uplift of higher forms of feeling than those which 
have already been examined must be recognized, and their 
influence and value to convey the truth about the Being of 
the World must be duly estimated, before it is possible to ac- 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 449 

count for the important religious truth that this Object finally 
attains the shape of an ethical and aesthetical Ideal. For it 
is in fact these higher forms of feeling under whose impulse 
and guidance man comes to believe in and to worship One 
perfect Ethical Spirit as the true and Alone God. 

" At this point we must of course refer back to our analysis 
of the ethical and aesthetical sentiments and judgments, and 
to our estimate of their value in contributing to the race's 
stock of knowledge respecting the constitution and meaning 
of the system of things and selves; and also to the history of 
the race's religious experience, which shows how the Ideal of 
religion, to which reference has just been made, has actually 
been achieved by a process of development." 

Beginning with aesthetical sentiments, we note how the feel- 
ing for the sublime, and its natural accompaniment of a 
sense of awe, mystery, admiration and the "painfully-pleas- 
urable sense " of helplessness and dependence, is one of the 
most fruitful sources of religious belief and worship. This is, 
indeed, primarily the logic of feeling; but it is the logic of 
thought as well. The grandeur of beaut} 7 in Nature suggests 
and seems to prove to the appreciative spirit of man, a grandly 
beautiful Spirit as immanent in, and manifesting itself 
through, natural existences, forces, forms, and relations. All 
the other forms of aesthetical feeling, which are awakened by 
different kinds of beauty, may also be awakened and cultivated 
in the interests of religion. They are all, moreover, capable 
of almost unlimited development. For, in the language of 
Kant, we seem here to be dealing with a spiritual faculty, 
" which surpasses every standard of sense." And in this field 
the creative imagination feels justified in stretching its efforts 
beyond all the limitations which the more prosaic, mechanical, 
and matter-of-fact observations of natural structures and 
processes impose. Yet here again there is a certain parity be- 
tween the conception awakened in the religious consciousness 



450 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

and those with which the chemico-physical sciences are familiar 
enough. The common ground of their meeting is in the 8es- 
thetical nature of man. 

The moral sentiments and judgments are even more power- 
ful in their influence over religious belief, and over the mental 
attitudes and practices with reference to the invisible, super- 
human agency, in which the essence of man's religious experi- 
ence is to be found. In the broader, but more appropriate 
meaning of both terms, it is not true that the ethical and the 
religious have ever been divorced. Both negatively and posi- 
tively, the lowest forms of religious faith and practice to which 
the history of the race bears witness, have invariably had some- 
thing — and, indeed, much — to say as to what is proper in 
conduct and in character. Not all tabu has a definitely moral 
significance. But in the case of primitive and savage man, 
the line between " better-not," because you are likely to be 
hurt, and " must-not," because you " ought-not," is never very 
strictly drawn. In general, religious ceremonial incorporates 
both these forms of the tabu. The same moral significance 
attaches itself to what has been called the religious act of 
" expropriation " — or the devotion to the gods of something 
which has value for the offerer. On the positive side, all re- 
ligions enforce with the moral feeling of obligation, as well as 
with the inferior motive of fear, the various forms of gift, 
prayer, sacrament, rites and religious austerities. 

When the Divine Being is conceived of as a sort of moral 
unity, whether in the impersonal form of the Hindu Atman or 
World-Soul, or in the yet more impersonal and vague form 
of the earliest Buddhistic conception of Karma, or as God, the 
Absolute Ethical Spirit, perfectly good, just, and holy; then 
all morality — and not some particular species of conduct 
merely — comes to be viewed as obedience to the Divine will. 
The height of the ethico-religious consciousness is reached 
when wrong-doing in general is regarded as a breach of the 
right relations between man and God; and when right-doing 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 451 

is regarded as the acceptable service of God, with fidelity and 
ethical love as its supreme motive. Thus there comes about 
such a fusion of the springs of morality and religion, that the 
whole life of conduct flows forth, strong, pure, and spontane- 
ous, as from one divinely inexhaustible source. With religion 
God is now conceived of, and thought about, as an essentially 
perfect Ethical Spirit. The world then becomes regarded as 
a theatre for the manifestation of the divine purposes toward 
God's spiritual creation. 

Most fundamental and important of all the forms of man's 
religious experience is the attitude which the human Self, as 
self-determining, assumes to the invisible and super-human 
Other Self; or to say the same thing in more familiar terms, 
the attitude of man's will toward the Object of his religious 
faith. The conditions and limitations of " moral freedom " 
in the religious sphere do not, indeed, differ essentially from 
those which have already been pointed out (p. 303f.) as belong- 
ing to the entire life of man in his present physical and social 
development. Freedom such as this is no attribute to be 
located definitively and exclusively in some one so-called 
faculty of Will. It is the achievement of the active, self- 
determining Self, involving the motives which originate in 
all its higher sentiments and aspirations, as well as in its lower 
impulses; and engaging all the various forms of its mental 
functioning. Were man not active in thinking, imagining, 
and feeling, he would not be free; but then neither would he 
be religious. Especially is the fact to be insisted upon in this 
connection that moral freedom is no ready-made attribute, 
or absolute and unconditional endowment of human nature. 
It is a matter of indefinite variety of degrees; and it is always 
a subject of development. It is, however, in the adjusting of 
himself, by a more or less deliberate choice, to the Object of 
religious belief that man's freedom makes the culminating 
manifestation of its essential excellence and likeness to this 
Object. In its highest form, such an act is properly to be 



452 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

described as a voluntary adjustment of the finite spirit to that 
Infinite Spirit, whom faith calls God. 

The importance of the relation which the development of 
human freedom in the religious sphere sustains to the value- 
judgments can scarcely be overestimated. On the one hand, in 
the formation of these value- judgments man exercises his voli- 
tion by deciding what shall have value, as judged to be of 
superior or supreme worth. For the judgment itself is not 
by any means a passive affair ; it is, the rather, itself an activity- 
involving the self-determining mind — a voluntary commit- 
ment of the Self to a mental attitude of preference. But on 
the other hand, the character of the value-judgment thus pre- 
ferred, itself reacts to assist or to hinder the development of a 
higher condition of freedom. Choices of the more spiritual 
values, when often repeated in the religious consciousness, set 
the will free from the influence of the morally inferior im- 
pressions and solicitations. In the lower stages of man's re- 
ligious life we note this competition between different kinds of 
good; — between the sensuous valuables to which the will is 
compelled by appetite, passion and desire, and the spiritual 
values which religion, in its higher stages of the activity of 
intellect and imagination, presents as rivals to these sensuous 
impressions. And the man is called to choose between the two. 
This choice it is which seems to religion as a choice between 
the flesh and the spirit; or between the world and God; or 
between human favor and the divine approval; or, finally, 
between a widening separation from the source of all spiritual 
life and its voluntary acceptance as the indwelling and wel- 
comed source of the true and highest life. 

In this way the exercise of moral freedom in the life of 
religion emphasizes the self-determining attitude of the human 
being toward the Divine Being. And the kind of self-control 
which the highest development of religion demands is the 
ability of the human will to respond to the Divine Will. 
Where this Being is regarded only as a motley and conflicting 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 453 

host of invisible superhuman powers, there is, of course, no 
freedom to worship a God who is conceived of as perfect Eth- 
ical Spirit and to serve his cause with fidelity and ethical love. 
Where the conception of the Object of religious faith is thus 
split up, as it were, and involves so heterogeneous and contend- 
ing elements, the allegiance of head and heart and life cannot 
freely go forth toward this object. The possibility of the high- 
est kind of freedom in religion depends, then, upon the pos- 
sibility of attaining and justifying a truly spiritual Ideal 
which shall harmonize all the interests of both the intellect 
and the gesthetical and ethical sentiments. But this possi- 
bility itself can be effectively realized only in the form of a 
choice. Only that form of religious belief, therefore, whose 
conception of God is that of an Ideal which satisfies the reli- 
gious needs, and which calls forth and fixes upon itself the 
most profound and influential choices of the human soul, can 
fully develope the potentiality of freedom that lies hidden in 
the soul's depths. 

There are two extreme views which stand equally opposed 
to the true view of the relation in which the freedom of man 
stands to the genesis and development of his religious experi- 
ence. One of them exaggerates the independence and creative 
activity of the finite will. The practical conclusion may then 
follow that man has no need of divine help, and even that " all 
religious ideals and systems are childish illusion, utterly in- 
compatible with right reason and rational ethics." On the con- 
trary, the other extreme view so relates the finite will to 
the Absolute Will, the human being to the Divine Being, that 
the former realizes the good of religion only by being merged 
and utterly lost in the latter. Man is then no longer a rational 
and free Self when he attains the end of religion; man is swal- 
lowed up in God. The problem of the relation of man's na- 
ture, as self-conscious and self-determining mind, to the In- 
finite Spirit whom religion believes to be manifested in that 
Nature whose child man surely is, affords, indeed, the most 



454 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

insolvable of all puzzles to the philosophy of religion. But it 
is certain that neither of these extreme views opens up the pros- 
pect of its solution in a way to correspond with the facts, or 
to answer the demand for satisfaction of the religious experi- 
ence and the religious evolution of the race. 

It has been customary to discredit the conclusions, both 
those more naive and those more elaborate and reflective, of 
the religious experience, by pointing out that it all ends in 
"a man-made God." This impeachment must certainly be 
allowed to be true. But if there has been any general conclu- 
sion established by the entire course of our reflective thinking, 
it is this: the world as man knows it is, of necessity, in the 
same meaning of the term, "a man-made world." But then 
this same world made man to know itself in this way; how else 
could a " world-made man " know the world than as a " man- 
made world"? The origin and development of all the re- 
ligions of the human race is characterized by this confidence 
that the invisible spirits which are objects of faith, although 
superhuman, are rightly to be conceived of as bearing the image 
of the human. So then, religious philosophy, when complained 
of for making God in the image of man, feels itself justified 
in replying that, in truth, this is because man has been made 
by God in the image of God. Here is without doubt, for both 
science and religion, a circle in the argument from which 
there is no possible escape. The trustworthiness of this cir- 
cular argument, which begins with the faith of reason in itself 
and ends with an ever-increasing, because an increasingly 
rational faith, is the path which man is compelled to take 
in all his progress toward the superior heights of knowledge. 
This making of man in the divine image is a development, a 
process in history. Man makes God in man's image; because 
God has made man in the divine image. Man, as he becomes 
more fully man, more of a rational and free personality, more 
worthily and truly conceives of God; but this is because God 
is himself making man more and more like God. 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 455 

A detailed study of the ways in which, this process of the 
religious development of the race is going on would require 
a careful survey of all human history. For history shows that 
this development has always been most intimately related with 
every other form of man's development. Man's economic, in- 
dustrial, political, scientific, moral, and artistic, progress has 
everywhere and at all times been interdependently related to 
his religious progress. Nor have there been lacking numerous 
important interactions between religious beliefs and practices 
and the physical environment. Especially has philosophy, or 
the products of reflective thinking, most powerfully affected 
the forms given to the Object of religious faith; and this 
result has very naturally been most marked in the higher and 
purer forms of this faith. The more profoundly man thinks, 
and the nobler his sentiments, the more reasonable and in- 
spiring must be the conception to which this Object corre- 
sponds. 

We see, then, that religion is no adventitious and insignifi- 
cant affair in the life and the development, of either the in- 
dividual or the race. It springs perennially from the entire 
nature of the man. It is ministered to by the entire Nature 
which constitutes his environment. In its historical evolution, 
it is intimately related to every other human interest; and it 
furnishes powerful reactions upon them all. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE WORLD-GROUND AS ABSOLUTE PERSON 

The varied conceptions of those invisible superhuman spirits 
which have been at different times the objects of men's re- 
ligious faith may be subjected to historical examination. The 
developments which these conceptions have undergone, and 
the form which the one conception has taken that represents 
the highest achievement of reflective thinking upon the basis 
of religious experience, may be studied in the same way. This 
historical research is the work of comparative religion. It 
results in showing how two groups of factors have been chiefly 
influential in bringing about the present state of religion in 
the world. There are, first, the factors which have made for 
the unifying of the Object of religious faith, as the essential 
unity of the World, when viewed both from the scientific and 
from the social points of standing, has become better estab- 
lished. Some kind of a Unitary Being must, then, be substi- 
tuted for the many invisible, superhuman beings believed in 
by savage or primitive man. One Alone God displaces in the 
faith of mankind, the gods many and of varied, if not con- 
flicting interests. And, second, the changing conceptions of 
the nature and laws of the development of personal life have 
most profoundly influenced the very structure of the Object 
whom religion believes in and worships. In the higher forms 
of constructive religious thinking, — especially in the theology 
of modern Christianity, — the Object of religious faith is God 
as personal and perfect Ethical Spirit. 

The data of man's religious consciousness, when presented 
in their sources by comparative psychology and in their devel- 
opment by comparative history, propose to philosophy its most 

456 



THE WORLD-GROUND AS ABSOLUTE PERSON 457 

profoundly difficult and practically important problems. These 
are the problems of God as personal and ethically perfect 
Spirit; and the problem of the relations in which man, as per- 
sonal and finite and ethically imperfect spirit, stands to God. 
Thrown into the form of questions, these problems may be stated 
somewhat as follows: How shall the Being of the World be so 
conceived of, as at the same time to comply with all that is 
known by the particular sciences, physical and psychological or 
moral, and also to satisfy the demands of religious experience? 
And again, how shall the relations of man, both individual and 
social, to this Being of the World be so conceived of as to 
conserve and secure, in accordance with the truths of fact, 
man's own social integrity and practical interests? These 
two problems are interdependently related. The attempt at a 
brief and confessedly fragmentary but critical discussion of 
them will be made in the following two chapters. 

Thus far a number of vague and somewhat uncouth terms 
have been employed to embody for the time being the factors 
which have been selected in order to form the most compre- 
hensive and reasonable conception of that Reality which is 
manifested in all the phenomena of nature and of human life. 
Among such terms have been " The Being of the World," " The 
World-Ground," or " Nature in the large," " The Universe," 
etc. As long as these metaphysical terms served only the in- 
terests of a generalization made for, and confined to, the 
purposes of the natural and physical sciences, the attitude of 
mind and life assumed toward them appeared to be of little 
practical importance. Indifierentism in the form of Syncre- 
tism, Scepticism, and Agnosticism, in the metaphysical sphere 
make comparatively little practical difference with the growth 
and usefulness for human betterment of these sciences. But 
the moment the border is crossed into the philosophy of the 
ideal, into the metaphysics of values, the case remains by no 
means the same. Whether morality, art, and religion, are really 
grounded in, and of interest to, the Being of the World, makes 



458 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

a great deal of difference with man's interest in morality, art, 
and religion; and as well, with his practice in all these fields 
of aspiration and endeavor. Especially is this true of religion. 
For the relation which is sustained by the way in which the 
race conceives of God to the entire development of the race, 
and especially to the solution of the problem proposed to phi- 
losophy by the religious experience of the race, is an indissoluble 
and essentially unchanging relation. Sincere and thorough in- 
differentism, or scepticism, or agnosticism on the part of men 
generally, — were either of these possible — would at once effect 
the negation of the religious ideal; it would in time destroy 
the religious experience of mankind. 

It is of primary importance in subjecting the postulate of 
religious faith to a critical examination, that there should be 
some agreement as to the kind of evidence which this postulate 
can rightfully be expected to offer. On this subject there are 
two views standing at opposite extremes, both of which must 
be rejected. The claim of the individual religious devotee to 
have an indubitable " vision of God " — whether more purely 
subjective or seemingly objective, and whether psychology pro- 
nounces the experience to be only half-illusion, or pure hallu- 
cination — cannot be offered to reflective thinking as conclusive 
evidence for the conception which religion holds as to the Be- 
ing of the World. In its more rational form the claim to 
have an intuitive knowledge of God becomes the theory affirm- 
ing what is known as a " God-consciousness " in all men. If 
by this it is meant that man has the power to make an imme- 
diate seizure, so to say, of the Object of religious faith, as we 
envisage the Self in self-consciousness or the something not- 
self in sense-perception, then the claim is psychologically in- 
defensible. There is important truth, however, touching the 
origin and nature of the fundamental conception of all religion, 
in the evidence which is customarily offered by the advo- 
cates of this view. What we do really find in the religious 
consciousness of the race is a spontaneous interpretation of 



THE WORLD-GROUND AS ABSOLUTE PERSON 459 

experience both internal and external, both of things and of 
selves, as due to other spiritual existences; — with its accom- 
paniment of confidence in the ontological value of the inter- 
pretation. This process is indeed the ever-developing source 
of the knowledge of God. 

" By an easy and almost inevitable transition the claim to 
have an intuitive knowledge of the reality and attributes of 
Divine Being passes over into the claim to have demonstrative, 
or what Kant called apodeictic, proof on these matters. It 
has for centuries been the ideal of philosophy and theology, 
by a process of reasoning which shall start from an absolutely 
indisputable major premise, and which shall proceed by 
equally indisputable steps, to establish deductively the con- 
clusion that God is, and — at least in some degree, as to what 
God is. The author of the critical philosophy, on the con- 
trary, supposed himself to have demonstrated once for all the 
illogical character of all the existing proofs of the reality of 
God; and to have shown in an a priori way that the very 
nature of man's cognitive faculty makes any real knowledge 
of God impossible. But like other demonstrations which were 
to settle for all time the limits of metaphysics as ontology, 
this one has been quite persistently disputed both by those 
who believe — as Kant himself did — in God, and also by those 
who are either agnostic or sceptical toward the conception." 

Between the extreme of confidence in either an immediate 
intuition or an unanswerable demonstration of the reality of 
the Object of religious faith and the extreme of agnosticism or 
despair, the grounds of this faith lie hidden or exposed in the 
experience of the race. The one inexhaustible source of evi- 
dences for the true conception of God is the experience of the 
race. But this experience must be considered in its totality 
and as subject to development. We may say with Schultz 
then: "To be certain of the existence of God means, funda- 
mentally considered, to recognize as necessary the religious 
view of the World." This belief has been in the world of men 



460 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

for untold centuries; it has already undergone a significant 
process of development. We are, therefore, not seeking a new 
vision or an hitherto undiscovered demonstration of the order 
expected from the genius in so-called pure mathematics; we 
are, the rather, trying to give a rational interpretation to the 
thoughts and beliefs of the ages, in the form of a Postulate 
touching the Being of the World. Or in other words, we are 
raising in a critical but sympathetic way the inquiry whether 
the World-Ground may reasonably be conceived of as personal, 
and as perfect Ethical Spirit. 

In answering this inquiry it is by no means necessary to 
take an entirely new start. For, indeed, all our previous in- 
vestigations have furnished more or less of material contribu- 
tary to the desired answer. It will therefore facilitate fur- 
ther inquiry if we summarize briefly some of the more im- 
portant points derived from them all. The conclusion from 
our attempt at a philosophical theory of knowledge need not 
be referred to again in this connection; since it has reference 
to all degrees and kinds of knowledge, quite irrespective of 
the nature of the subjects about which man vaguely aspires or 
definitely attempts to know. Here, science is as completely 
bound by limitations as is religious faith. 

Eecognizing the limitations, and at the same time holding 
to the faith of reason in itself so long as it is a reasonable 
faith, the following inferences of a general character may now 
be taken over into the field of religion. First: All the par- 
ticular sciences, in their dealing with the specific kinds and 
relations of real objects, find themselves compelled to assume 
a certain inherent nature as belonging to these objects, and 
to the elements of which they are composed. On further ex- 
amination, this nature appears to stand for a characteristic 
group of habitual actions or tendencies under the control of 
ideas. But to admit this is virtually to say that all things, 
and all elements of things, are known to science, and only 
known, when they are conceived of as more or less self-like. 



THE WORLD-GROUND AS ABSOLUTE PERSON 461 

It may be a startling, but it is a justifiable, way of stating 
the metaphysical assumption which underlies all human knowl- 
edge of physical objects to say that, in order to be known by 
the person, man, things must be themselves, in reality, pos- 
sessed of certain personal attributes. Or, in a yet more gen- 
eral way: The laws and forms and tendencies, which con- 
trol the forces of action and reaction, are strictly analogous 
to ideas regulating a so-called will. And while the phenom- 
ena are manifestations, or appearances (as, indeed, the very 
word signifies) ; the will and. the ideas manifested are invis- 
ible, and of a quasisipuitual quality. 

But, second: As the intricate and complex phenomena are 
more and better comprehended and systematized by the growth 
of knowledge, especially in terms of modern science, the tend- 
ency becomes stronger and more compelling to regard all the 
seemingly separate kinds of force as variations, or different 
forms, of one Force; and, in like manner, to consider all the 
forms, and specific varieties, and varying relations, and inter- 
dependent developments, as constituting one System, — a Na- 
ture, or Universe, that is somehow one day to be understood 
as a Unitary Being, in conformity to some supreme idea, or 
Ideal. That science is far indeed from knowing the world 
perfectly in this way, and further still from comprehending 
the Idea which the world's evolution is realizing, must, of 
course, be admitted without question. Science is, in truth, far 
enough from knowing any simplest, and seemingly most value- 
less Thing, or the many ideas which the thing may be follow-, 
ing and expressing, in any complete way. There is that 
which baffles research, in the clod as well as in the star, in 
the single living cell as well as in the spirit of the artistic 
or religious genius. In spite of this, however, we must do 
the best we can; and to all appearances, we are making some 
substantial gains in our knowldge of what sort of a One World 
this is, in the midst of which the human race is evolving. But 
the one Force which science desires to substitute for manv 



462 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

varied and conflicting forces, and the Unitary Being, with its 
onward march toward the completer realization of some Ideal, 
serve to bring together all things, and all their transactions, 
■under a conception yet more distinctly that of an invisible 
and gt^m-spritual reality. The Eeality, the Being of the 
World, to the faith in which science invites us, is essentially 
non-sensuous, intellectual, and Self-like, in a far grander way 
than are the individual self-like things composing the physical 
system. 

Third: It is only, however, when man knows himself that 
he gets the more imperative impulse, and the fuller insight, 
toward the knowledge of those characteristics which are essen- 
tial to the attainment of reality in its realest and supremely 
valuable form. His own Self, man may come to apprehend, 
in a more immediate and certain way, as not simply self-like 
when known by another, but as a very true and real Self. 
The reality of such a self-hood is constituted by the activities 
of the self-conscious and self-determining mind, the spirit 
that is in man. Here again, — and in some respects, especially 
here, — there are many limitations to be acknowledged; there 
is much extension and correction of hypotheses to be desired; 
there are many puzzling problems to be solved, and many in- 
vincible mysteries to be confessed. And always it must be re- 
membered that this kind of self-realization is a matter of de- 
grees, and a subject of development. At the same time, its 
reality is not to be questioned; it is no subject for scepticism 
or agnosticism; and its value cannot be made lower than that 
which belongs to the standard by which all other values are 
tested and, as values, estimated and explained. 

Such a world as this, then, — a system of self-like things, 
environing and partially but not wholly, controlling a race of 
beings that have somehow developed self-conscious and self- 
determining minds— is The World as man knows the world 
really to be. All its phenomena are necessarily akin to him- 
self; for they are all manifestations of an invisible, and spir- 



THE WORLD-GROUXD AS ABSOLUTE PERSON 463 

itual Reality, the highest approach to whose characteristics 
he recognizes as found in the reality he knows himself to be. 
Thus far the physical and psychological sciences seem com- 
pelled to go toward the personification of the World-Ground, 
while maintaining their own peculiar points of view. 

We cannot, however, rest argnment here if we are to afford 
full satisfaction to human interests, both intellectual and prac- 
tical, in our conception of the so-called World-Ground, as the 
Reality whose nature all the phenomena are manifesting in 
an increasing way. We must, the rather, fourth, receive to 
our confidence for all which they are worth, the testimony 
of human ideals. That these ideals, both the moral and the 
artistic, have powerfully influenced the development of the 
race in history, there can be no doubt. But this influence 
has been largely due to the fact that men have believed their 
ideals to have verity ; and also due to the authority which is thus 
imparted to ideal conceptions of the real Being of the World. 
Xeither the obligations of duty, nor the allurements of beauty, 
have ever been believed to be wholly subjective. And no theory 
of evolution has ever explained, or ever can explain, how the 
moral can arise out of a Nature that is wholly non-moral; or 
how the sesthetical can emerge from a material Universe that 
has itself no appreciation of beauty. It is true, as has been 
admitted in treating of the philosophy of morals and the 
philosophy of the beautiful, that variations and uncertainties 
cloud human experience with both these classes of the ideal; 
and that the conceptions which come to rule for the time being 
in both, are subject to a continued process of development. 
It is even more profoundly true that the ideals, if any, which 
the Being of the World is following in its moral and assthetical 
education of the race (if one may be allowed to speak in this 
way) still remain — and probably, always will remain — much 
shrouded in impenetrable mystery. Xone the less, however, 
the race, and most firmly the best of the race, maintains its 
confidence in the faith that its own ethical and aesthetical 



464 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ideals have their Ground in Reality. But to maintain this 
confidence is to give to Reality a more distinctly personal char- 
acter. It is to construct a conception of the World-Ground, on 
the hasis of the belief that It manifests itself to us, as a 
spirit in us and akin to what is best and highest of our own. 

Now religion, as an individual and practical belief, fastens 
upon all these indications which point out the real nature of 
the world; and to satisfy its demands, it proceeds to all the 
lengths necessary in the process of personification. In its 
crude, unscientific, and unphilosophical form, and with a 
spirit divided in its impulses and attractions between the mor- 
ally and aesthetically good and the morally and aesthetically 
evil, it creates many invisible and superhuman spirits, of varied 
and conflicting kinds. But the philosophy of religion aims, 
here as everywhere, at unity and harmony. It asks : " May we 
not, in accordance with all we know of the phenomena, con- 
ceive of the World-Ground as Absolute Person; may we not 
even conceive of the World-Ground as the perfection of moral 
and 8ssthetical Personal Life ? " 

On the very threshold of an attempt to examine this prob- 
lem the inquirer is met by certain a priori denials of the 
possibility of uniting the proposed terms in any one concep- 
tion. Personality and absoluteness, or infinity, are promptly 
alleged to be incompatible terms. Equally incompatible are, 
it is said, all 1 properly personal characterizations — such as 
self-consciousness, reason, and all moral attributes — with the 
absoluteness of the World-Ground. The harsher contradic- 
tions and graver difficulties which have been introduced into 
the conception of God as Infinite and Absolute Person are, 
at least in part removed, when the following three considera- 
tions are borne in mind. 

" And, first : To identify the Infinite or the Absolute with 
the unknowable or the unrelated is absurd. To know is to 
relate, and all knowing is, in respect of one group of its most 
essential elements or factors, relating activity. Thinking is 



THE WORLD-GROUND AS ABSOLUTE PERSON -165 

relating, and although thinking is not the whole of knowing, 
knowledge and growth of knowledge are impossible without 
thought. Moreover, all human knowing is finite; man's knowl- 
edge of the infinite and absolute is a very finite and relative 
kind of knowledge. But to speak of this knowledge as im- 
possible, because the knowing mind is finite; or of absolute 
knowledge as a contradiction in terms, because knowledge is, 
essentially considered, relating; — this is so to mistake the very 
nature of mental life as to render the objection nugatory and 
ridiculous. This strange psychological fallacy, although it 
so frequently entraps writers to whom credit must be given 
for ordinary acquaintance with mental phenomena, scarcely 
deserves other treatment than a reference to the most ele- 
mentary psychological principles. Man's cognitive capacity is 
not to be compared with the capacity of some material vessel; 
the content of the mind is not to be likened to the contents of 
a wooden measure." As to The Infinite, the Unknowable, or 
The Absolute, the Unrelated, we are indeed warranted in 
affirming : " Such a metaphysical idol we can never, of course, 
know, for it is cunningly devised after the pattern of what 
knowledge is not" (Schurman, Belief in God, p. 117). 

" But, secondly, the words infinite and absolute as applied to 
any reality cannot be used with a negative significance merely. 
Absolutely negative conceptions are not conceptions at all. 
Thinking and imagining cannot be wholly negative perform- 
ances. Words that have no positive meaning are no true 
words; they are not in any respect signs or symbols of mental 
acts. Pre-eminently true is all this of an idea so infinitely 
rich in content as that arrived at by thought, when, reflecting 
upon the significance for Reality of man's total experience, it 
frames the ultimate explanation of it all in terms of infinite 
and absolute self-conscious and self-determining mind. In 
arguing about the possibility of an Infinite Personality this 
rule, which forbids laying all the emphasis on the negation, 
must always be rigidly observed. Personal qualifications do 



466 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

not necessarily lose their characteristic personal quality, when 
it is affirmed that certain particular limitations, under which 
we are accustomed to experience them, must he thought of as 
removed. No removal of the limit destroys, as a matter of 
course, the essential nature of the qualification itself." 

Yet, again, — to express essentially the same cautionary 
truth in another way — the words infinite and absolute as ap- 
plied to any subject of human thinking, must always be taken 
with an adjectival signification; they are predicates defining 
the character, as respects its limits, of some positive factors of 
a given conception. The Infinite, The Absolute, — these and 
all similar phrases, when left wholly undefined — are barren 
abstractions; they are, too often, only meaningless sound. The 
negative and sceptical conclusions, which it is attempted to 
embody in this way, are controverted by all the tendencies of 
the modern sciences — physical as well as mental. All these 
sciences, in their most comprehensive conclusions and highest 
speculative flights, point toward the conception of a Unity 
of Eeality, a Subject (or Tr'dger) for the phenomena. The 
Oneness of all beings that are real, we have called the Being 
of the World, or the World-Ground. But, as has already been 
seen, we cannot rest in this abstraction. What really is this 
Being which has the manifold qualities and performs the 
varied operations? This Subject of all the predicates, we de- 
sire more positively to know — meantime we call it absolute 
because, itself unconditioned, It is the Ground of all conditions. 
We call it infinite because, itself unlimited from without, or 
Self-limited, It sets the limits for all finite and dependent 
existences. 

In speaking, then, of God as infinite and absolute person, 
or Self, it is not meant simply to deny that the limitations 
which belong to all finite and dependent things and selves 
apply to him; it is also meant positively to affirm the confi- 
dence that certain predicates and attributes of Personal Life 
reach their perfection, and are harmoniously united, in the 



THE WORLD-GROUND AS ABSOLUTE PERSON 467 

self-conscious and rational Divine Will. It follows from this 
that the conceptions of infinity and absoluteness apply to the 
different predicates and attributes of a person, in quite differ- 
ent ways. Thus a personal God can be spoken of as infinite, 
in any precise meaning of the term, only as respects those 
aspects or activities of personal life to which conceptions of 
quantity and measure can be intelligibly applied. His in- 
finiteness of power, for example, becomes his omnipotence ; his 
infiniteness of knowledge his omniscience; his complete free- 
dom from control by the limiting conditions of forces that act 
in space becomes his omnipresence, etc. To such moral at- 
tributes, however, as wisdom, justice, goodness, and ethical 
love, the negating aspect of the conception of infinity does not 
apply, except in a figurative way which by being mistaken, 
may become misleading. It is at once more appropriate, in- 
telligible, and safe, to speak of the perfection of God as re- 
spects these moral attributes. For the very conception of 
measure and quantity, strictly understood, has nothing to do 
with moral dispositions or attributes, as such, but only with 
the corresponding number of objects toward which these activi- 
ties are exercised. An infinitely wise person, for example, is 
one whose wisdom is perfect in all relations with all other 
beings; but this perfection of wisdom cannot be exercised 
unless the same person is omniscient, omnipotent, and per- 
fectly good. 

By calling God absolute it is meant, on the one hand, to 
deny that he, in respect of his Being or any of its manifesta- 
tions, is dependent on any other than his own self-conscious, 
rational will. No others, no finite things or selves belonging to 
the world of which man has experience, constitute the original 
ground and reason of the divine limitations, whether of power, 
knowledge, wisdom, or love. He is in his essential nature ab- 
solved, absolute, as respects dependence upon others. But 
positively considered, his absoluteness is such that He is the 
One on whom all beings, both things and selves, are dependent. 



468 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

In his self-conscious and rational Will, finite existences and 
events have their Ground. Outside, or beyond the control of, 
this self-conscious and rational Will, no real uniting princi- 
ple for the cosmic existences, forces, and events, can anywhere 
be found. 

In brief, by speaking of God as infinite and absolute the 
philosophy of religion means to affirm that there are no limita- 
tions to the self-conscious rational will of God which can arise 
elsewhere than in this same self-conscious rational Will. God 
is dependent on no other being for such limitations as He 
chooses to observe. God wills his own limitations. And he 
would not be infinite, or absolute, or morally perfect, if he did 
not. Will that is not self-controlled, or limited by the reason 
or purposes known to itself, is neither rational nor morally 
perfect will. On the other hand, all finite and dependent beings 
and events do have the only satisfactory explanation of their 
existence and their natures — that they are at all, and what 
they are — in the Infinite and Absolute One; and this infinite 
and absolute Being is the Object presented to religious faith 
as its ideal. 

The objections to conceiving of the World-Ground as an 
infinite and absolute person, in order to fit such conception 
to be the satisfying Object of religious faith, arise chiefly on 
two grounds. They are either predominatingly metaphysical 
or — perhaps it would be more accurate to say, psychological; 
or else they are ethical. The metaphysical objections revive 
the claim that self-conscious personal being cannot be infinite 
and absolute; the ethical objections interpose cautions and fears 
connected with the integrity and values of the moral and 
religious life. The former may be removed by a profounder 
metaphysics, based upon a truer psychological analysis; the 
latter may be reassured by pointing the way to a more philo- 
sophically satisfying and practically useful kind of faith. 

In considering critically the first class of objections our 



THE WORLD-GROUND AS ABSOLUTE PERSON 469 

thought is brought back to the point from which our argu- 
ment set forth. It can now be made clear that these objections 
derive their power to confuse and deter the mind, largely 
through their misuse of the ambiguous terms " infinite " and 
" absolute." That a self-conscious and self -determining mind 
cannot also be conceived of as infinite and absolute, turns out 
by no means the self-evident proposition which it has been 
assumed to be. Indeed, certain indications appear which point 
in the opposite direction. Even our human finite and depend- 
ent self-consciousness does not have its most essential charac- 
teristics properly described by such terms as finite and de- 
pendent; much less by such meaningless terms as not-m&mte 
or not-absolute. In other words, there is nothing in the essen- 
tial nature of self-consciousness, even as we know it in our- 
selves, to show that the range of its grasp, either as respects 
the number of its objects or its speed in time, determines the 
possibility of its very existence. On the contrary, the more 
perfect our self-consciousness becomes, the more manifold are 
the objects which it clearly displays within the grasp of the 
one activity of apprehending the Self. Human self-conscious- 
ness is indeed a development; and at its highest degree, 
whether as respects the multitude of its objects, or their rela- 
tions to each other and to the Self, is undoubtedly a meagre, 
a limited affair. It is always dependent upon conditions over 
which we ourselves have little or no control, either direct or 
indirect. But in it is the very type and the supreme example 
of clear, certain, and ontologically valid knowledge. The 
amount of the small approaches which the human mind can 
make in the direction of becoming the Infinite and Absolute 
Mind, is tested by the increase, and not by the decrease, of 
the region covered by the individual's self-conscious life. The 
richer and more comprehensive the individual's self-conscious- 
ness becomes, the more do the limitations of his finiteness 
recede. The more the Self immediately and certainly knows 



470 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

of itself, the more it is capable of knowing about other selves 
and things. Thus by increasing the limits of self-conscious- 
ness, rather than by relapsing toward the unconscious and there- 
fore the unknowable, does the self-conscious and self-determin- 
ing mind of man become a larger and a clearer " mirror of 
the world." For example, in cases of intimate friendship 
between human beings one person may come to know another 
person with a suddenness, clearness, and certainty of intu- 
ition, which converts the ordinarily slow, obscure, and uncer- 
tain inferences that serve us men for knowing, or rather 
guessing at, the thoughts of others, into the semblance of a 
satisfactory and genuine self-consciousness. And great minds, 
who observe with a loving sympathy the transactions and laws 
of the physical world, rise at times to experiences which seem 
to approach, if they do not fully attain, the likeness of an in- 
tuitive envisagement of Nature's deeds and of the meaning of 
those deeds. In general, the more of objects and relations the 
human mind can take up into its apperceptive and self-con- 
scious experience, the more freed from its customary limita- 
tions this finite and dependent mind becomes. In a word: 
The perfecting of self-consciousness tends to raise the mind 
toward a more boundless and approximately absolute knowl- 
edge. 

But it is urged that self-consciousness, since it involves the 
distinction of subject and object, and implies the setting of 
the Self over against the non-self, is essentially an affair of 
limitations and of dependent relations to some other than the 
Self. That self -consciousness is, for all human selves, thus 
limited and dependent, may be admitted as often as the ob- 
jector will. Why need keep on repeating that, of course, this is 
so? But when this human limitation, in fact, is converted 
into an essential characteristic of self-being as such, the argu- 
ment violates every truth with which the study of the phe- 
nomena seems to make us familiar. And the use of the words 
infinite and absolute reaches the height of their misuse; the 



THE WORLD-GROUND AS ABSOLUTE PERSON 471 

object of self-consciousness becomes endowed with a sort of 
mystical negating and limiting power. In this way the quite 
absurd conclusion is arrived at that my Self when object, in 
some sort hedges in and confines the activity of the same self 
when acting as the knowing subject. According to this view, 
the more the extension of the object is increased, the more the 
activity and reality of the subject should be diminished. Now 
the fact of experience is just the contrary. In the growth of 
a Self, the subject becomes more real according as it is able 
to unite in the grasp of its conscious life a greater number of 
objects, — whether these, its objects, are its own states or are 
so-called external objects. For, in the cognitive act the rela- 
tion of subject and object is not, essentially considered, one in 
which the two limit each other; it is, the rather, a relation 
w r hose essence is a living commerce of realities. In the knowl- 
edge of self-consciousness the relation is a commerce between 
different aspects of one and the same reality. 

It is, therefore, the perfection of the self-consciousness of 
God which makes it possible to say of Him that he is infinite 
and absolute. It is this very conception of the World-Ground 
as self-conscious and self-determining mind, or Spirit, which 
enables the finite mind to transcend the inscription on the 
shrine of Athene-Isis at Sais : "lam all that was, and all that 
is, and all that shall be; and my vail hath no mortal raised." 
But this affirmation of the infinite and absolute character of the 
self-conscious personal Being of the Object of religious faith 
is not simply an attempt to gather under the obscuring folds 
of a loose and purely figurative conception a lot of ill-sorted 
particulars that can in no way be realized together. On the 
contrary, it gives us an all-comprehending and vital princi- 
ple for the explanation and interpretation of the system of 
actual things and selves, such as can be won by reflective 
thinking in no other form. It permits the mind to conceive 
the divine knowledge as having that perfect immediacy, com- 
prehensiveness, certainty, value for truth, of which man's 



472 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

faint, limited and meagre self-consciousness is, nevertheless, 
the highest type of his actual or possible experience. It also 
encourages the mind to regard all finite beings and events as 
essentially and constantly dependent upon the self-conscious 
and rational Will of God. Thus all these beings and events 
become objects of the divine self-consciousness. Science, in 
fact, takes its conception of " Nature " or the " Universe," in 
substantially the same unlimited way. Out of It, all things 
come; in It, all things are included. But we have already 
seen (pp. 261-267) that, in order to do this, science itself must 
recognize the truth that Spirit is the essence of Nature; and 
that the uniting force of the Universe is a Will guided by 
Ideas. 

The ethical recoil from certain conclusions, to leap to 
which is easy, and which almost seem required by logical 
consistency if the standpoint of a personal Absolute is to be 
maintained, deserves sympathetic and patient consideration. 
No one, however, of the metaphysical predicates or moral at- 
tributes of personal being is to be understood in a perfectly 
unlimited or absolute way. No one of them is a solitary affair. 
Of necessity they limit each other ; and both in their nature and 
in their manifestation they are mutually dependent. Personal- 
ity is not a merely unrelated aggregate of independent activi- 
ties. And instead of its perfection requiring or permitting the 
unrestricted increase of any one of its essential activities, the 
case is quite the contrary. No finite Self makes progress toward 
an escape from its natural limitations by letting its psychic 
forces loose from the control of wise thoughts and morally 
good motives. Neither can wisdom and goodness grow in any 
human Self while the real core of selfhood, the control of 
will, is being corrupted or diminished. The very constitution 
of personality is such that its different attributes are mutually 
dependent, reciprocally limited. And the nicer and more har- 
monious the adjustment becomes, in which wisdom and good- 
ness guide power, and power greatens under their control, 



THE WORLD-GROUND AS ABSOLUTE PERSON 473 

and for the execution of their ends, the nearer does personality 
approach toward the type of the infinite and the absolute. Or, 
— to cease from so abstract a manner of speaking — growth 
toward the perfection of personality can be attained only as 
the forms of personal activity, not merely become greater in 
amount, but also more harmoniously active in the unity of the 
one personal life. 

On applying these considerations to the Divine Being the 
conclusion is not made more obscure, nor does it lie farther 
away. Because God is essentially personal, a self-conscious 
and rational Will, the different predicates and attributes un- 
der which the human mind must conceive of Him are self- 
limiting and seZ/-consistent. This is to say that they limit each 
other according to that conception of perfect personality which 
is realized in God alone. But the ground of this limitation is 
in no respect, when essentially considered, outside of, or inde- 
pendent of, God himself. God's infinite power is not blind 
and brutish force, extended beyond all limit whatsoever in a 
purely quantitative way. God's infinite power is always lim- 
ited by his perfect wisdom. Even the purely natural sciences, 
when forming their conclusions without any recognized influ- 
ence from moral or religious ideals, admit natural forces into 
the account only as regulated by natural laws. Neither is the 
divine omniscience an ability to know, or mentally to repre- 
sent as real and true, what is not real or what is irrational. 
God's knowledge is limited by the laws of reason; but in the 
case of the omniscient One, these so-called laws are only the 
essential forms of his own independent rational life. That is 
real, to which this infinite and absolute Will imparts itself 
according to these rational forms. 

But, in even a special way, it is to be said that the moral 
attributes of God are self-consistent limitations of certain of 
the metaphysical attributes. If the divine justice or goodness 
is to be considered as perfect, then these moral attributes must 
constantly and completely qualify the divine omnipotence. 



474 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

And to say that God cannot do wrong, when one is satisfied 
that his righteousness is perfect, is not to limit the divine 
power or to render it any the less worthy to be called omnip- 
otence. In all the discussion evoked by the attempt to apply 
such terms as infinite and absolute to God, it is the unifying 
nature of his Personality — perfectly self-dependent and self- 
consistent — which affords both the theoretical and the practical 
solution of the same problems, if these problems are to be 
solved at all. How can God be infinite and absolute, and at 
the same time personal? To this inquiry one may answer: 
Just because he is personal. How shall self-consistency be 
introduced into this complex of metaphysical predicates and 
moral attributes with which man's religious feeling and philo- 
sophical thinking have filled out the conception of the Object 
of religious faith? By more and more expanding this same 
conception as that of a perfect, and therefore infinite and abso- 
lute Person. 

The growth of that ideal of the World-Ground which is 
represented by the conception of God as infinite and absolute 
Person, has its Toots deep down in religious feeling and also 
in philosophical reflection. The impression made upon the 
mind of man by his total environment is one of mystery, 
majesty, and illimitable force, in space and in time. What is 
greater than all his eye can see, or his hand touch, or his in- 
tellect measure and comprehend, but the invisible Cause of 
it all? In these vague feelings religion and art find a com- 
mon impulse; and later on, if not at once, philosophy as well. 
But science and philosophy aim not simply to feel, but also 
to comprehend, this mysterious, majestic, and infinitely ex- 
tended Being of the World. And by their studies of IT, 
through centuries of time, they arrive at the conviction of its 
real unity. It is itself real, and it is the source or Ground of 
all particular realities; It gives laws and life to all the forms 
and relations of finite realities. Such is the reasoned con- 
viction which comes to enforce these feelings of mystery, 



THE WORLD-GROUND AS ABSOLUTE PERSON 475 

majesty, and limitless power and extent, in space and in time, 
that are called forth by man's experience with the cosmic ex- 
istences, forces, and processes. 

And now the inquiry arises and presses for an answer: In 
what terms shall the mind best express its grasp upon the 
Object of this reasoned conviction? That it is a perfectly 
comprehensible, not to say a perfectly comprehended, concep- 
tion, cannot of course be maintained. The most dogmatic 
theology, or self-confident philosophy, or boastful science, 
would scarcely venture to affirm as much as this. With differ- 
ent meanings and yet in substantial unison, they must all con- 
fess : " There was the door to which I found no key." Inas- 
much as no finite thing, however mean, and no casual event, 
however trifling, offers itself to man's mind in a way to en- 
sure a complete comprehension, one may be the more ready to 
hasten the admission with regard to the problem of the Uni- 
verse itself : " It is as high as heaven, what canst thou do ? 
deeper than hell, what canst thou know?" This attitude 
of reflection is everywhere met in the history of human re- 
flective thinking; it is the inevitable and logical result of con- 
templating the problems offered by the religious conception 
of God as infinite and absolute; it is found alike in pantheistic 
theosophy and in Christian mysticism. Hence it is that Pis- 
tis Sophia, a book whose very title is significant of the deter- 
mination to resolve faith into an esoteric theory of the Divine 
Being, raises the question : " How is it that the first mystery 
hath twelve mysteries, whereas that Ineffable hath but one 
mystery ? " And the Upanishads, whose discovery, says Pro- 
fessor Hopkins, (The Religions of India, p. 224), is a "rela- 
tivity of divinity," abound in passages declaring the incompre- 
hensible character of God. Scarcely less true is this of the 
biblical writings. But men, declares a modern Hindu writer, 
"for the practical purposes of their existence, need to get God 
and not merely to have a knowledge of him.*' 

Neither this, nor any other rational view, however, regard- 



476 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ing the incomprehensible nature of God as infinite and abso- 
lute, is the equivalent of the doctrine that the tenet itself is 
inconceivable in the meaning in which this word is so fre- 
quently employed. The infiniteness of God cannot, indeed, 
be conceived by repeated and cumulative activities of the mind 
in a time-series; or by pushing imagination, as it were, to 
transcend at a bound the limitations of spatial perception 
or of the numerical expressions for sums in energetics. But 
the relief from such futile attempts is by no means to be 
found in a sluggish repose of intellect, or in so-called faith 
in a Eeality which is inconceivable, because such faith implies 
the effort to grasp together in a single ideal mutually exclu- 
sive or self-contradictory ideas. An irrational faith is no 
worthy substitute for an irrational thought. 

The valid conclusion of our discussion is, the rather, that 
we may — nay, must — believe in God and think of God, in 
terms of self-conscious and rational, that is Personal Life. 
And this we may do without fear that the course of our be- 
lieving and thinking will be compelled to terminate, either 
against an impassable wall at the end of a blind alley, or in a 
bottomless and darksome bog, where shadows of abstractions 
allure the mind onward to increasing dangers, but can never 
lead it into a region of light and safety. The conception of 
God as infinite and absolute is, indeed, an ideal which can 
never be exhaustively explored, or fully compassed by the finite 
mind. But just as modern science, while it is learning more 
and more the limitations which beset its utmost efforts to ex- 
pound its own fundamental conceptions and postulates, never- 
theless understands these conceptions better and better, and 
continually validates these postulates more satisfactorily; so 
may it be with the philosophy of religion. From similar ef- 
forts, when directed toward the Object of religious faith, the 
reflective thinking of mankind can never be frightened away, 
whether by agnostic fears or by awe in the presence of incom- 
prehensible mysteries. This conception of God justifies, while 



THE WORLD-GROUND AS ABSOLUTE PERSON 477 

it does not destroy but the rather enhances, the profoundest 
sesthetical and religious feeling. And it is at the same time 
so increasingly satisfactory to the reason, as the reason is 
employed in the growth of science and in the speculations of 
philosophy, as to entitle its conclusions to the position of an 
accepted theory of Reality, as the postulated World-Ground. 



CHAPTER XXII 

GOD AS ETHICAL, SPIRIT 

The metaphysics of the physical and natural sciences not 
infrequently assumes to treat of all phenomena as belonging 
to a se?/-explanatory, seZ/-contained, and ^/-maintaining sys- 
tem. This is equivalent to saying that all operative causes 
and actual relations which make the phenomena better under- 
stood by our minds must be either found, or reasonably postu- 
lated to be found, within the system itself. To admit the 
breaking-in upon Nature, in the large meaning of the word, 
of that which is swper-natural or extra-natural, is not a form 
of explanation which science can tolerate. Now the postulate 
which reflective thinking upon the phenomena of religious 
experience aims to establish, has much of this same merit in a 
yet higher degree. So far as certain metaphysical predicates 
are concerned, the conception of the World-Ground as Abso- 
lute Person needs no supplementing by way of attributes that 
do not essentially belong to itself. For example: Omnip- 
otence, omnipresence, eternity, omniscience, and unity; these 
are essential to the very conception of Absolute Person. But 
plainly, with the possible exception of omniscience, there is 
no more mystery or confusion about all this way of thinking 
of the ^/-sufficiency of the World, when it is assumed in terms 
of the philosophy of religion than when the same thing is 
taken for granted as a basis for the positive sciences. And 
even with regard to omniscience, it is by no means clear how 
all the particular sciences taken together are going to explain 
a System, which is orderly, law-abiding, and framed after the 
pattern of ideas, without assuming the control of an all- 
embracing mind as its immanent reason, 

478 



GOD AS ETHICAL SPIRIT 479 

That God may have these metaphysical predicates logically 
applied to him follows from the very conception of God. It 
is desirable, however, that they should be defined in such man- 
ner — so far as this is possible — as to harmonize with one an- 
other and with those moral attributes which religious faith 
attributes to its Object, for the more complete satisfaction of 
human ethical and assthetical sentiments and ideals. When con- 
ceived of in this way, omnipotence has both its negative and 
its positive aspect. Conceived of as power, God is infinite 
and absolute. There is no conceivable limit to his power other 
than that which he puts upon it; and for its possession and 
exercise he is dependent upon no other and is bounded by no 
other. But as thought of in a positive way, religion acknowl- 
edges the Omnipotent One as the source of all actual and 
possible forces; as the inexhaustible fountain of all the cos- 
mic manifestations of energy, and the spring from which come 
all the so-called human powers of psycho-physical and mental 
activity. In the practical life of religion, this view excites 
and supports the feelings and the conduct on the part of man 
which are appropriate to his immediate and constant depend- 
ence upon God. To religious faith it supplies the motive and 
the assurance for filial piety, trust, and hope. To the unbe- 
liever it may become a chastening and morally corrective 
thought. For the will of God is sweet or bitter to the taste, 
according to the way in which it is taken. 

The doctrine of the divine omnipresence, negatively taken, 
denies that the Divine Being is subject to the spatial attributes 
and spatial relations which limit the presence and the power 
of all finite beings, both things and selves. It also denies that 
God is to be conceived of as over against the World, in a 
gwzsi-spatial and temporal way. Positively taken, omnipres- 
ence predicates the power and co-conscious being of God, here 
and now, without distinctions of space and time. To religious 
thought and feeling He is the One: — 



480 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man." 



For the philosophy of religion this view maintains the be- 
lief in the universal immanence of the Divine power, knowl- 
edge, and goodness; and it also sustains the argument which 
looks to his self-conscious and self-determining Will as the 
ground and explanation of all spatial relations and spatial dis- 
tinctions. Thus for religious faith and the conduct founded 
upon it, there is no existence, and no place, and no event that 
can be freed from all the fullness of the presence of God. 

The predicate of eternity, both negatively and positively 
taken, does much the same thing for our human conception 
of God as related to the category of time, 1 which the predicate 
of omnipresence does for the conception of God and for the 
category of space. The conception of eternity, however, must by 
no means be confused with the wholly negative and self-contra- 
dictory theological phrase of an " eternal now." Limitations 
of time, as man experiences them, where all his activities of 
body and mind take place, feebly, fitfully, and confined with 
the narrow lines of a temporal series, do not apply, either in 
fact or in idea, to the Absolute Person. But the positive con- 
ception of eternity cannot, of course, be attained by any man- 
ner or measure of the addition together of portions of time. 
So far as the efforts of the human mind are able at all to ap- 
prehend what it cannot comprehend, the results of these efforts 
may perhaps best be stated in something like the following 
way : " The world's absolute and universal time is the actual 
succession of states in the all-comprehending Life of God. 
If then one is willing to substitute for the abstract, mathe- 
matical symbol of infinity ( oo ) the conception of the life of 

iFor a discussion of the metaphysics of the conception of 
" Time," see Chapter VIII in the author's Theory of Reality (Chas. 
Scribner's Sons, 1899). 



GOD AS ETHICAL SPIRIT 481 

an absolute person, one may validate both the popular and the 
scientific assumption of an absolute time in which all the 
events of the world are ever taking place. This conception is 
that of a series which must indeed be conceived of tinie-vri.se, 
but which involves the denial of a beginning or end to itself; 
a series that, for every now, or » 3 reaches both backward and 
forward to oon. The transcendent reality of time is thus con- 
ceived of as the all-comprehending Life of an Absolute 
Person/' 

Most important, however, for religious faith is the meta- 
physical predicate of omniscience, when attributed to the Ob- 
ject of faith. Indeed, omniscience seems to imply and include 
all the other metaphysical predicates, while it is a sort of pre- 
liminary necessity, as it were, to the perfection of the moral 
attributes. In all religions, the gods, or invisible and super- 
human spirits, have been supposed to know more than men. 
The concentration of knowledge in one Divine Being is there- 
fore assumed and naively expressed for all kinds of monothe- 
ism, in these sentences from the Koran : " With him are the 
keys of the unseen. Xone knows them save He; but He 
knows what is on the land and in the sea; and there falls not 
a leaf, save that He knows it; nor a grain in the darkness of 
the earth: nor aught that is dry, save that this is in his per- 
spicuous book."' Those limitations of content, clearness, and 
accuracy, to which all finite experience is subjected, and which 
can never be removed for the minds of men, do not apply to 
the infinite and absolute knowledge of God. And for the posi- 
tive conception of the Divine omniscience we are at liberty to 
employ the highest possible, and even conceivable type of 
human knowledge, as a help to the imagination. All his 
knowledge, which extends to all objects and all events, has 
the immediateness, clearness, certainty, and fullness of con- 
tent, of which we have only a faint and imperfect type in our 
most highly developed self-consciousness. Thus the religious 
man knows that nothing which he thinks, or feels, or plans, 



482 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

is hidden from God; and also that for this thinking, feeling, 
and planning he is absolutely and momently dependent npon 
the immanent power of God. 

The ethical, psychological, and metaphysical objections 
which may be urged against this view of the method of the 
Divine omniscience, as a species of co-consciousness, whether 
they can be satisfactorily answered or not, do not impair the 
value, for purposes of the practical life, of the postulate itself. 
Somehow, God knows it all. But, in our judgment, these ob- 
jections do not weigh at all heavily against this doctrine of 
the type of that knowledge which is to be thought of as in- 
finite and absolute. Indeed, the objection, when made on 
moral grounds, that in this way God becomes, as it were, the 
self-conscious and planful author of error and sin, has really no 
significance at all in this connection. For it is not the cogni- 
tive relation, the relation of knowledge, in which one person's 
thought and planning stands to another person's thought and 
planning, that immediately affects the freedom of either. It 
is, the rather, the relation in which one otherwise self-deter- 
mining will stands to another will. I may not only predict 
without doubt how another will choose, but even know with- 
out uncertainty how he is choosing; but if I choose that this 
other do the choosing, he may be as free in his choosing as 
though I had no knowledge of him at all. Nor from the 
psychological point of view does it seem as though ^/-con- 
sciousness and another's co-consciousness were in any respect, 
of necessity, mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they may 
be regarded as different aspects of one undivided experience, 
even in the case of human relations. Indeed, other-conscious- 
ness and self -consciousness grow together; and especially is 
this the case with human spirits that are most akin and most 
intimate. For the pious soul, no other thought is more wel- 
come, and brings more of comfort and strength, than the 
thought of the immanent presence of the omniscient spirit, 
with and in itself. The metaphysical difficulty which arises 



GOD AS ETHICAL SPIRIT 483 

to obscure all discussion as to how God can know the future, 
if it is not relieved by the conception of the Divine self-con- 
sciousness as extending to all existences, all relations, and all 
events, is at any rate — it seems to us — not increased by this 
conception. Certainly, the human mind cannot worthily rep- 
resent to itself the omniscience of God, as extending over all 
future time, after the species of a shrewd guess or a conclu- 
sion arrived at as the terminal of a careful mathematical 
calculation. But when in any way the completeness of the 
conception of the metaphysical predicate of omniscience, as ap- 
plied to the Object of religious faith, is sacrificed, in the sup- 
posed interests of man's moral freedom, the cause of this same 
freedom receives much more harm than assistance. God is 
omniscient; and the future is in his hands, because he knows 
it and he has power over it. Thus much belongs to Him as 
Absolute Person; and if he is also perfect Ethical Spirit, his 
knowledge is not inconsistent with his wisdom and justice; 
neither will his power be abused for the impairment of either 
of these moral qualities in man. 

The unity, or one-ness, of God is not an affair of mathemat- 
ical quantity. As Absolute Person he is, with a metaphysical 
or ontological certainty, the Alone God. There is and can be, 
no other than He. But positively regarded, this unity is that 
which must be conceived of by the human mind in terms of 
the highest type of conceivable unity. This is the unity of a 
self-conscious and self-determining mind. That the Object 
of religious faith is, in reality, such a unity — why, this is 
the conclusion which we have been enabled to reach by the en- 
tire course of our previous argument. 

The nature of the argument — so far as it can be called 
argument at all — changes when we come to consider the rea- 
sons which have led mankind in history, to the attribution 
of moral perfection to the Object of religious faith. The be- 
lief in God as holy, or perfect Ethical Spirit, is indeed a pos- 
tulate which reposes upon the highest developments of religious 



484 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

experience. But the reasoning by which it is supported is 
plainly of a circular character. This circular course is chiefly 
due to the fact that the human mind is somehow compelled 
to " get around " the presence of an undeniably monstrous 
amount of what seems to it like real evil in that system of 
things and selves which constitutes man's physical and social 
environment. To state the case of this peculiar circulus in 
arguendo somewhat bluntly, When the question is asked: 
" How do you solve the problem of evil ? " the reply of religion 
is somewhat like this : " By faith in a perfectly good and just, 
or holy God." But when the question is turned about : " How 
do you reach and justify this faith?" the inquirer is apt to 
be told, virtually, that it is "because this faith either solves, 
or greatly relieves, the painful pressure of the problem of 
evil." 

Now neither on experiential nor on philosophical grounds 
can a solution of the problem of evil be given in a manner to 
satisfy both the intellect and the ethical and sesthetical senti- 
ments of the race. The fact that much of what seems to our 
minds unnecessary pain and waste, intellectual blindness, and 
moral failure and degradation, is provided for, as it were, in 
the very constitution of things and of selves, cannot be suc- 
cessfully disputed. On the other hand, as the larger view of 
the profounder significance and more nearly ultimate tenden- 
cies of the cosmic system, in its relation to human interests, 
is gained; certain principles are being slowly won from experi- 
ence which greatly soften our judgment as to the Being of 
the World, in regard to its indifference to pain and waste and 
sin. Biological science points out: (1) how the very consti- 
tution of all animal life, including man's, is such as to limit the 
endurance of suffering; (2) how provision is made for much 
enjoyment and for the easement of pain, in all animal life; 
and (3) how the animals, the lower races of men, and the chil- 
dren of the more, sensitive races, really suffer much less than 
the hyperassthetic observer imagines that they do. Much more 



GOD AS ETHICAL SPIRIT 485 

impressive, however, is the evidence afforded by the biological 
theory of evolution; this theory is more clearly showing that 
much, if not all, of this vast amount of pain and waste eventu- 
ally results in the uplift of life toward higher stages of the 
realization of its own ideals. 

But above all do we esteem it necessary to a just and fair 
estimate of the problem of evil, that the points of view pecu- 
liar to moral and aBsthetical sentiments, judgments, and ideals, 
should be steadfastly maintained. From these points of view, 
as we have already seen while standing in them, the Being of 
the World does not appear to be aiming at any short cut to 
procuring a complete and temporary satisfaction for the ap- 
petites, passions, and desires of all those sensitive natures 
which It enfolds, and nourishes or destroys, within its own 
Xature. If, then, the so-called "instrumental theory" is 
applied to the problem, and it is maintained that somehow 
the pain and waste involved in the struggle for existence, and 
indeed in existence itself on any terms, are the indispensable 
means for the development of life under existing, and even 
under any reasonably conceivable conditions ; then the confidence 
of the religious consciousness may claim in some large way to 
have the voice of science on its side. And the disciplinary 
value for the higher end of moral and artistic, as well as, 
chiefly, religious, culture adds great weight to the argument 
for a so-called theodicy. 

When, however, the side of the problem which considers the 
amounts, the causes, and the results, of so-called " moral evil," 
is approached, the course of reasoning and argument is by no 
means so easy or so clearly marked out. That pain is a neces- 
sary instrument to the development, and even to the existence, 
of all finite spiritual life, has been held to be true by writers 
on morals from time immemorial. " When a difficulty falls 
upon you," says an ancient author, "remember that God, like 
a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young 
man." But it is "that you may become an Olympic con- 



486 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

queror." " Without pain/' says a modern writer, " it does not 
seem that the life of the spirit could arise from the physical 
life." In accordance with this view, the developmental theory 
of man's ethical and assthetical progress undertakes to show 
how moral failure and obliquity, and even moral disease and 
death, in overwhelming numbers of the race, have served as 
means to the spiritual uplift of humanity. The essential 
value of struggle with temptation, and of experience with the 
results of yielding to temptation, may also be estimated in a 
way greatly to reinforce the claim that much sinning is an in- 
dispensable prerequisite to some holiness. 

A vast amount of pain there is, however, which does not 
appear to serve the ministrations of a higher good, whether of 
happiness or of moral purity. It is just this inevitable and 
overwhelming amount of suffering and struggle for bare ex- 
istence which has prevented most of the race from reaching 
the higher and more valuable forms of intellectual, social, 
artistic, and even of ethical and religious satisfaction. Besides 
this, the distribution of suffering, and its consequent tempta- 
tions to wrong-doing, is so apparently unjust as to constitute 
in itself one of the darkest aspects of the problem of evil. 
Even if this difficulty be lessened or diverted by any theory 
of future rewards and punishments, — whether in the vague, 
indefinite form of Karma, or the more definite form of Chris- 
tian orthodoxy — the theory of itself cannot be established sat- 
isfactorily except in dependence upon that faith in the Divine 
ethical perfection, which it is itself expressly designed to sup- 
port. Here again, then, we encounter the same vicious (?) 
circle in the argument. There is truth, therefore, in the 
assertion of Eucken that the " medicinal theory," as applied 
to the problem of evil, makes of the whole subject a yet more 
insoluble riddle. 

The difficulties of the problem of evil are all accentuated 
and complicated when the problem takes the form of a The- 
odicy, or an attempt to justify completely, to man, the ways 



GOD AS ETHICAL SPIRIT 487 

of God with man. For while the pantheistic and pessimistic 
theories of the World's origin and development allow of 
ascribing its load of evils to the irrationality of a wholly 
blind Will, or to the unconscious striving of an immanently 
teleological but impersonal Will; monotheistic religion — and 
especially Christianity — must consider the reasons for the ex- 
istence and prevalence of evil to be found in God as the 
Creator, Preserver, and moral Euler of the universe. In God, 
then, must the solution of the problem of evil be found, if it 
is to be found at all. Plato saw this; and his treatment of the 
difficult subject in the "Republic" (book X) is in all essen- 
tial respects a theistic, and even a Christian theodicy. 

But, second, the very attempt at any such solution of the 
problem of evil as religion proposes implies the firm belief, 
if not the demonstrated truth, that the world as known to 
man, is a moral system. Indeed, all arguments, both pro and 
con, and the very effort either to erect or to destroy a tenable 
theodicy, agree upon the postulate that the Being of the 
World is a subject for moral judgments. Were it not so, the 
natural forces, processes, laws, etc., of the world, could give 
no evidence either for or against its own moral attributes. 
He who does not believe in some kind of an ethical nature as 
belonging to the World-Ground, can neither be resigned to 
the Divine Will and live piously, nor " curse God and die," — 
while at the same time maintaining the slightest claim to ra- 
tional consistency. 

Hence, third, the necessity of considering the problem in a 
large way, and in its totality. This totality concerns the sys- 
tem of all known or knowable things and selves, if regarded 
in some way independent and connected, but only, of course, 
very imperfectly understood, and even as yet very partially 
discovered. This totality also embraces the boundless stretches 
of the world's time, not only backward but also into its 
prospective future. The problem of evil is not the problem of 
a day, or of a century, or of a thousand years. 



488 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

The so-called "argument from ignorance/' illogical and 
unscientific as it usually is, does not seem to be wholly out of 
place in dealing with the problem of evil in this large and 
universal way. Indeed, the particular sciences make no small 
use of a similar method of reasoning, although in a concealed 
and half-hearted manner. They always espouse the cause of 
order and law, against the evidence which seems to be in 
favor of a temporary and local reign (?) of chaos and old 
night. Nature, when summoned before the bar of human rea- 
son and accused of the crimes of disorder and law-breaking, 
is invariably given by her devoted disciples the benefit of the 
doubt. Her lawyers plead her cause very lustily, and yet by 
no means always in strictly logical form, before her defamers. 
But why should man, who does not hesitate to break the laws 
of Nature and suffer the consequences in the way of physical 
disease and death, curse the same Nature for instituting and 
enforcing these laws, even as against his desires and cherished 
interests, and in spite of his ignorance? Is it any more rea- 
sonable to curse Nature and so die in mind and spirit at her 
cruel and tyrannical feet, than to curse God and die at the 
foot of his throne? On the contrary, the religious postulate 
of the perfection of the Ethical Spirit which it devoutly 
ascribes to the World-Ground is more faithful and loyal to 
its Object, and scarcely less consistent and conclusive in its 
logic, than is the corresponding scientific assumption. Religion 
clings to its faith in the perfect justice and goodness of God; 
it magnifies the evidence in the favor of this faith, and it 
minimizes or wholly disregards the evidence which is against 
this faith. This it does, chiefly for the very same two reasons 
which so powerfully influence the particular sciences: (1) The 
evidence for faith is constantly accumulating in the develop- 
ment of man's religious experience — and that most, in the 
highest and best experience; (2) the faith itself is so satisfy- 
ing to the intellectual and sentimental interests of religion, 



GOD AS ETHICAL SPIRIT 489 

and so helpful for the strengthening and uplift of the life of 
endurance, duty and achievement. 

The lower forms of religion have little or no difficulty with 
the problem of evil. According to their beliefs, there are 
some good gods, indeed; but there are even more devils and 
bad gods. Why should there not be? And why should not 
man's experience of both good and evil, as due to the influ- 
ences of invisible spirits, be divided in accordance with the 
facts of the life of each individual, between the two ? But the 
development of reflective thinking and of moral sentiment and 
judgment inevitably enforces some species of ethical and 
philosophical Dualism. Both, mobs or groups, of spirits be- 
come organized socially; and the two must then be placed in 
some sort of a struggle for equality, or one must be subor- 
dinated to the other. Thus the resulting dualistic solution 
of the problem of evil assumes one of two principal forms. 
Either the two kinds of invisible spiritual agencies continue to 
exist after the analogy of a human social organization; or 
else each of them becomes hypostasized in some one divine 
being. There is Ahura-Mazda, King of Light; and there is 
Ahriman, King of Darkness — wholly good God and wholly 
bad Devil. Enormous as are the difficulties which any logical 
and consistent system of Monism finds with the problem of 
evil; Dualism is always and absolutely unable to endure the 
strain of the uprising and uplifting reflection and religious 
experience of the race. The conception of God must, then, 
he modified so as to make Him his own justification, of his 
own ways, to those who consent to take the attitude of filial 
piety toward Him. This altered conception is not that, sim- 
ply, of a World-Ground which may be received by the intel- 
lect as an Absolute Person; it must appeal to heart and good- 
will, as well to the intellect, in the form of a postulate which 
affirms the perfection of the Object of faith as Ethical Spirit. 

For the individual believer the problem of evil is now 



490 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

solved by his changed estimate of the values of the different 
goods, and by his faith that the changed attitude in which he 
stands toward God secures for him the supreme and all-in- 
clusive good. This attitude is a voluntary, ethical, and spiritual 
union with the. object of his faith. Indeed, all the higher re- 
ligions make this good, which in the estimate of a mind that 
can see truly, outweighs all the evils of life, to consist in some 
sort of communion with the divine beings. Even the lower 
forms of religion show intimations of the same confidence. 
In Greece, to dwell with the gods on Olympus was the highest 
wish of good fortune for the believer after his death. The 
supreme desire of the old-Vedic rishis was to be united with 
Agni, Veruna, or Indra. And when the impersonal principle 
Brahma is elevated above the gods, even the gods themselves 
are only gateways to the soul that longs to be absorbed in the 
higher good of a union with Brahma. But above all does 
the Christian faith convert the bearing of all suffering for 
the individual Self into a loving and cheerful submission to 
the will of God; and the triumph over all moral evil, however 
much self-sacrifice it may involve, into a loving divine service. 
Thus there is something of the fine Stoicism about it, with 
which the crippled slave philosopher, Epictetus, referred to the 
divine dealing with him : " What about my leg being lamed, 
then ? " " Slave ! do you really find fault with the world on 
account of one bit of a leg? Will you not give that up to the 
Universe? Will you not let it go? Will you not gladly sur- 
render it to the Giver ? " But there is also something yet 
finer in the way that religious faith answers, for the individual 
believer, the dark problem of evil. As seen from its highest 
point of view, the minutest details of the life of the pious man 
are under the merciful and loving care of a Heavenly Father: 
and suffering is only a filling-up of the measure which has been 
poured so full already by all the true sons of God. 

Thus, also for a humanity that has the fullness of the true 
faith, God is so conceived of as to be his own Theodicy. But the 



GOD AS ETHICAL SPIRIT 401 

question recurs as to the basis in fact upon which this faith 
is reposed; and as to the rationality of the faith itself, when 
taken in that large way which is necessary in order even par- 
tially, to compass the problem of the World's suffering and 
moral failure. To this question there are these three consid- 
erations to be advanced. First, and now most important of 
all, the appearance and growth of religious experience itself 
is of immense value in support of the claim that God is indeed 
perfect Ethical Spirit. The experience is a fact. It is one 
of those facts of an abiding and rising confidence in the reality 
of human ideals, which constitute the most significant and in- 
fluential factors in human history. The grand conceptions of 
a perfectly good God, and of his Kingdom, are with the race. 
Whence did they come? To tabulate, to estimate and to criti- 
cise, the empirical sources, does not suffice to account for the 
conceptions themselves. The experience claims to be about, 
or of, the World-Ground; its ultimate sources must be sought 
and found, if found at all, in the reality of the World-Ground. 
If the World-Ground can be conceived of as producing so 
comforting and lofty an illusion, then it is surely capable — 
given time enough — of vindicating its own character and of 
proving that the faith is not an illusion, but, the rather, an 
insight into the Eeality corresponding to its own Ideal. Such 
testimony from religious experience, and especially from the 
highest religious consciousness, is not indeed a demonstration; 
but it is of essentially the same nature as all of the complex 
argument by which we are compelled to establish the ration- 
ality of man's faith in God. Only this particular experience 
is still in the making, as it were: and the problem, to the 
better solution of which it promises its contribution, is so 
deep, and high, and vast in extent, and so dark, that a few 
centuries can scarcely be expected to contribute a complete 
empirical solution. Have all the countless records of the 
countless biological ages served as yet fully to answer the 
problems of biological evolution? 



492 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

In saying this we touch upon the second of the more im- 
portant suggested considerations. The nearest which human 
reason can come to any theoretical solution of the problem of 
evil must be found in a doctrine of Becoming, — in a theory 
of the development of the world within which man's total 
experience lies. Such a theory must be founded upon facts; 
and the facts upon which it is founded, if it is to have any 
value beyond that of a pleasant dream or a fanciful hypothesis, 
must be facts of the world's actual history. Among these facts, 
however, and by no means of least account in determining the 
character of the world's evolution, are those which pertain to 
the religious and moral history of mankind. Christianity's 
doctrine of this development regards it all as somehow falling 
under the divinely ordered scheme of redemption; it is the 
history of the coming in its perfection of the Kingdom of 
God. 

It must not be forgotten, however, that Christianity — like 
Bramanism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, in this respect 
— does not offer itself as an immediate and direct cure for all 
the evils of the world. Neither does it promise any indirect 
but final cure in this life for all those experiences which are 
esteemed evil by man, and which are really evil from the point 
of view of his sentient nature and desire for happiness. Sal- 
vation offers primarily a cure for man's sinful attitude toward 
God, and for its evil nature and consequences. 

The reasonableness and hopefulness of this offer is sup- 
ported by two tenets of faith, in which all the greater religions 
have a share, but which Christianity has perfected in their 
more elaborate and logically consistent form. These are the 
doctrine of the Future Life and the related doctrine of the 
Social Ideal. In general the religions which have, partly 
through other considerations, arrived at the belief in immor- 
tality, have felt the need of this belief in order to maintain 
any satisfactory view of the problem of evil. " Thus," says 
D'Alviella, " most peoples have sought in doctrines of a future 



GOD AS ETHICAL SPIRIT 493 

life the means of repairing the evils and injustices of the 
present."' It is Christianity, however, which by its unfolding 
of a belief of Judaism in a social redemption of the righteous 
and the faithful, has offered for the solution of the problem 
of evil a faith in the progressive and finally triumphant King- 
dom of God. 

It should be noticed, finally, that for the faith of religion, 
much of the evil of the world can scarcely be said to be 
evil at all. Religion itself is, indeed, born in humanity through 
the travail of desire to get rid of the evil — both the evil with- 
out and the evil within. As the development of religion pro- 
ceeds, the moral purification and spiritual insight that lead 
to communion with God, and to a union with Him which we 
might almost say, is " for better or for worse/' become the 
things of highest worth to the religious mind. This longing 
for deliverance then developes that despair of self-deliverance, 
or of other deliverance at the hand of man, which is, on its 
other side, the longing for redemption. The great and final 
function of religion is the ministry to this yearning. To this, 
subjective religion holds out the hope of vanquishing the evil. 
The evil of suffering is to be overcome by piously bearing it 
as an expression of God's will under the conditions of living 
assigned to the individual; and by doing what can wisely be 
done to remove it from others, by use of means that accord 
with the divine righteousness. The evil of sin is to be van- 
quished by availing one's self of the divine help, and by help- 
ing others to escape: in a word, by conforming to the condi- 
tions set by God's good Will for the establishment, growth, 
and final triumph, of his Kingdom among men. 

Let us, therefore, be content at present to put the solution 
of the problem of evil which religion offers, in hypothetical 
and negative form. Lnless the historical evolution of the 
human race, as a part of the World-All, may be believed to be 
directed toward, and to be secure in. the final triumph of that 
all-inclusive Good, which all the other great religions dimly 



494 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

foreshadow, and which Christianity denominates " Eternal 
Life in the Kingdom of God/' there is no possible solution 
to be discovered or even imagined for this dark problem. The 
summation of what is called " earthly good/' were it possibie, 
as it is not, that it should be attained for the race under the 
fixed conditions of its earthly environment, would not abolish 
the conflict between good and evil, and the resulting schism 
in man's soul. The hope of an ideal good, that is spiritual 
and collective, is held out by religion. The faith in the secur- 
ing of this good as the fixed purpose of God, through a process 
of development, is religion's solution of the problem of evil. 
Confirmations, that find a certain broadening basis in our 
experience of the world, are accumulating in the storehouses 
of the particular sciences. And although the evidence is far 
from being theoretically complete, its general nature is similar 
to that upon which repose the most important postulates of 
man's intellectual and practical life and development. 

The difficulty which thought and imagination have in har- 
monizing the different moral attributes when in action, in an 
ideal way, is much greater in the case of a so-called Infinite 
and Absolute Person than in the ease of any finite person. 
Concessions must be made to unavoidable ignorance, if any 
human being under the actual conditions of his physical and 
social environment, with the best of intentions and the most 
zealous care, fails of perfect justice. Perfection of wisdom in 
the choice of ends and means is, of course, impossible for any 
finite being. In human society the salutary purpose to punish 
wrong-doing and to avenge the wronged and the oppressed is 
unavoidably doomed to contend with the honorable impulse to 
pity and to forgive the wrong-doer. Indeed, it is by no means 
infrequently true that the better the man, the more severe 
and bitter his inner conflict between opposing virtuous in- 
clinations; and the greater the chances of a decision that can 
only be followed with a species of moral self-disapprobation 
and regret. Thus, the picture of moral imperfection in its 



GOD AS ETHICAL SPIRIT 495 

struggle toward an unapproachable moral ideal, can easily be 
understood and appreciated, because it is matter of actual 
experience. But how shall the mind of men present to thought 
or imagination the perfection of these contending moral at- 
tributes in one person and in every motive and act of that 
person? This is indeed a problem impossible for the finite 
mind definitely to solve. 

What has already been said, however, as to the essential 
nature of the virtues, as conceived of and known and prac- 
ticed by man, and of the moral ideal, affords some light upon 
this difficult problem. Moral conduct, essentially considered, 
implies just such a variety of mental attitudes toward other 
moral beings in a rational correspondence with their char- 
acter and with their social relations to us and to one another. 
Nor is there any one virtue which, on account of its inherent 
pre-eminence, is entitled to overshadow — much less to over- 
whelm — all the other virtues. The perfection of moral per- 
sonality would, therefore, require a steadfast and omnipotent 
Good-Will, guided by omniscience, absolutely free from the 
limiting conditions of space and time, and so present and 
operative in every event and everywhere. But it could not be 
expected — indeed, it would seem to imply an absence of per- 
fection — that, to the ignorant and imperfectly informed ob- 
server, all the deeds of such a Good-Will should appear equally 
just and equally kind, or equally brave and equally prudent, 
and perfectly loyal to truth, etc.; — under all the varying cir- 
cumstances and conditions of the evolution of the human race 
in this its corner of the Universe. Above all must it be re- 
membered that the Divine Ideal, whether conceived of in terms 
suggested by man's moral and sesthetical experience or not, 
is by no means so simple an affair as to be entirely compre- 
hensible by finite intelligences. 

For a reason, then, which seems essential to the very con- 
stitution of the moral ideal of perfection, its progressive 
realization will offer many insoluble puzzles to those most 



496 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

sympathetically inclined toward a full faith in its existence 
and supremacy. While for the doubter and the critic no con- 
vincing argument to support such a faith can possibly be sup- 
plied. When, then — as so constantly happens, — the question 
arises and weighs heavily upon the heart of man : " Shall not 
the judge of all the earth do right ? " religious faith will an- 
swer "Yes"; but those who have not that faith will still re- 
main in doubt or will give a negative answer. For it is only 
by the completed process of self-realization that the perfection 
of Ethical Spirit can demonstrate itself to the human mind. 
To complete such a process is the province of the ages. 

The attribute of "holiness" as applied to the Divine Being 
is rather a ceremonial, priestly, or theological, than a dis- 
tinctly ethical conception. Neither in its nature, origin or 
development, is it the precise equivalent of the perfect justice 
and goodness of God. In the lower forms of religion, this 
conception has little or no moral quality whatever. It arises 
in the vague feeling that the gods appreciate some kind of, 
at least physical purification; and, therefore, that the wor- 
shipper is more likely to obtain their favor if he undergoes 
some kind of a purifying ceremony. To appear somewhat 
" cleaned up " gives one a better chance of propitiating the in- 
visible spirits who influence the weal and woe of mankind. 
Even in the greater Teligions, including Judaism and Chris- 
tianity itself, holiness is rarely made wholly synonymous with 
the perfection of moral purity. Nor can it be denied that cer- 
tain of the more modern, and still existent ideas connected 
with this term, are inconsistent with, rather than contributory 
to, the faith of religion in a God who is perfect Ethical Spirit. 
This inconsistency may take either one of two extremes. It 
may substitute more or less completely the conceptions which 
are cultivated by an excessive regard for the ceremonial and 
the dogmatic in the religious life, in the room of those ideals 
which are most valuable from the points of view held by moral 
sentiment and ethical judgments. Thus the Object of re- 



GOD AS ETHICAL SPIRIT 497 

ligious faith is made to be a holy Being by his own superior 
regard for Himself in respect of the way in which he is ap- 
proached by the worshipper; or else on account of his interest 
in being accurately comprehended, and conceived of with a 
logical consistency. Holiness in man, as a requisite for the 
divine favor, then becomes a process of purifying the life with 
appropriate ceremonial observances or with instruction in so- 
called " sound doctrine/' 

But the developments of the conception of holiness as ap- 
plied to God have had an even yet more baleful influence as 
contributing to another extreme of belief and practice. This 
influence has induced theology to make of God a Being who 
must be conceived of as embodying ethical attributes in a way 
to repel and confuse the most cultivated and choicest moral 
sentiments ; and to contradict the most " well-convicted " 
moral judgments of mankind. Such an unfortunate result 
may be achieved either by over-emphasizing the divine retribu- 
tive justice at the expense of wisdom, pity, and mercy; or 
else by exalting these milder attributes in such manner as to 
rob justice of its moral fibre and so to make impossible any 
satisfactory theodicy. 

When, however, the conception of holiness is itself purified 
and made clear of its quite too customary ethical and assthet- 
ical imperfections, it becomes harmonious with a faith in the 
moral perfection of God. A perfectly holy God then becomes 
a perfectly good God; — that is, the Ideal of personal, moral 
perfection. Then, too, the motive of subjective religion for the 
finite spirit becomes the exhortation: "Be ye holy even as I 
am holy " ; or — more simply and appealingly said : " Be ye 
therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." 
And the goal of the religious life, as the chief good of human- 
ity, becomes the attainment of a perfect moral union with the 
Divine Being. 

The ethical and artistic efforts of man to improve his con- 
ception of Deity constitute the most important and interesting 



498 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

feature of the history of his evolution. The architectonic of 
the gods, however, has been a matter of slow development. 
Even now it is far enough from perfection; — whether one take, 
for one's point of observation, the ethical, the aesthetical, or 
the more purely practical, position. The gods of ancient 
Egypt, for example, were conceived of with a most excessive 
naturalism; and as subject to all manner of degrading limita- 
tions and lack of perfection. They suffer from hunger, thirst, 
old age, disease, fear, and sorrow. They perspire, have head- 
aches and bleeding at the nose. Their limbs shake ; their teeth 
chatter; they shriek and howl with pain; they are not immune 
as against either snakes or fire. Even the great gods of the 
Egyptian pantheon cannot perfect themselves by throwing of 
these depressing natural burdens. But as man's ideal of per- 
sonality and of personal relations, as viewed from aesthetical 
and ethical points of view, has improved, he has more and 
more idealized the objects of his religious belief and worship. 
In the other greater world-religions, but pre-eminently in the 
best efforts of reflective thought to interpret the experience 
which Christianity has brought into the world, the result has 
been the framing of a conception of an Absolute Person, who 
shall stand in the Unity of his Being for the realization of all 
of humanity's ideals. 

There must be, however, a complete union of the "metaphys- 
ical predicates " and the " moral attributes " in order to fill 
out the conception of the perfection of the Divine Being. This 
union can be effected — whether in thought or in actuality — 
only as it exists in the unity of a personal life. In answer 
to the demand for such a unity, religious faith attempts to 
blend all these predicates and attributes in the one Ideal of 
eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, Goodness 
personified. In a word, its Object is conceived of as perfect 
Ethical Spirit. But in the mixed, scientific, philosophical, 
and religious development of man there has been a constant 
tendency for two lines of reasoning upon the data of experi- 



GOD AS ETHICAL SPIRIT 499 

ence to fall apart; and so to prevent or to impair the perfec- 
tion of this ideal. To state the case in a somewhat extreme 
way : The God of science and philosophy, and the popular God, 
have often been at war with each other. Philosophy, in fidel- 
ity to the data furnished by the positive sciences, has evolved 
the conception of an Absolute or World-Ground. In this con- 
ception the attributes of eternity, power, absoluteness as re- 
spects limitations of time and space, have been the factors 
which have claimed the pre-eminence. Thus the philosophers 
God, even if he ceases to be a barren abstraction and gains 
the title of " Supreme Being," or the " Power which the Uni- 
verse manifests/' is not so personified as to come near to man, 
to touch his heart, and to influence his life profoundly on its 
ethical and spiritual side. But, on the other hand, the more 
popular conceptions so anthropomorphize God as to dissatisfy, 
if not to shock and revolt, the more permanent demands of the 
scientific and rational interpretation of human experience in 
its highest, most dignified, and noblest developments. 

Xow neither of these lines of human development, or of the 
conceptions for which they stand, can be safely discredited 
or left out of our total account. The " philosopher's God " 
cannot be dismissed from consideration with an outcry against 
its metaphysical origin and abstract characteristics. It is a 
constantly recurrent and permanent force in the evolution of 
the religious life of humanity. It represents the highest flights 
of human reason in the attempt to reach the lofty altitude 
where the atmosphere is so free from the mists of ignorance, 
and the dust of superstition and passion, that the purged eye 
may look into the very face of the Infinite One. Xor is this 
true of the mystical speculations of India or of later Greece 
alone. It is also true of the Fourth Gospel, of some of the 
Epistles ascribed to Paul, and of other passages in the New 
Testament. And the history of the first, four centuries of 
Christianity shows how, on a basis laid in part by Plato, Aris- 
totle, and the Stoics, the Christian view rose to a conception of 



500 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

God, not only as the Father and Redeemer of men and the 
author of the forms and qualities of things, but as the very 
Being, Substance, and Reason, of the world of things and souls. 
" The cosmogony of Origen was a theodicy " : and Augustine's 
" City of God " is a treatise on cosmology. The Christian 
conception of the Object of faith can no more be made in the 
future to return to the alleged simplicity and freedom from 
metaphysics of early Christianity than the existing cosmos can 
be forced back into the mythical egg from which it was 
brought forth. 

On the other hand, the God who dwells ever near the popular 
heart, even in the lower forms of religious development; he 
who sits by the fireside and guards the hearth, who presides 
over the boundaries of the fields, and is the guardian angel 
of each new-born child; he who makes the clouds his mes- 
sengers and rides upon the wings of the wind; he who springs 
to life before us in every fountain and whirls by the frightened 
mariner in every storm; — He, even He, represents a concep- 
tion that cannot be denied its correlate in reality. The homely, 
domestic divinity, the God of the child and of the lowly in in- 
tellect and in life, He is no less a reality than is the philoso- 
pher's God. But we must reiterate the supreme triumph of 
man's religious development: There is only One God; and He 
is the Alone God. 

As the development of the race has gone forward, the greater 
religions, and especially the more thoughtful forms of Chris- 
tian teaching, have presented in a more harmonious union the 
different factors of the conception which appeal to the various 
interests of humanity. Thus God is more perfectly known, be- 
cause known as perfect Ethical Spirit, as well as the Infinite 
and Absolute One. But this union is disturbed, rather than 
assisted, when there arise within the same religion two con- 
ceptions of God, — one esoteric and one popular; and when two 
sets of doctrines as to the divine relations to the world of things 
and selves are evolved. In its efforts to perfect the concep- 



GOD AS ETHICAL SPIRIT 501 

tion of Divine Being, Christian dogma has centered its atten- 
tion chiefly upon the Fatherhood of God and the sonship of 
man; — that is, upon the relations of God to man in those con- 
ditions of weakness, suffering, and temptation, which are in- 
separable from existence in the world. This fact has made 
this religion of inestimable practical value for the comfort and 
uplift of mankind. But when even these truths are so dis- 
torted as to obscure, or even to contradict the ideals of Divine 
Being which have been evolved by the reflective use of human 
reason, in its highest forms of functioning; then religion 
ceases to represent the perfection of God in the most effective 
way. As a consequence, science and philosophy become arrayed 
against the popular religion; and the latter is sternly called 
upon in the name of reason to improve and elevate its most 
fundamental conceptions. For the Eeality corresponding to 
all man's supremest Ideals must be found by religion in the 
perfection of the Object of its faith. In the same source must 
also be found the pledge of the progressive realization of these 
ideals. The same confidence is expressed by poetic insight : — 

"All we have willed, or hoped, or dreamed of good shall exist; 
Not its semblance but itself." 

From the highest point of view reached by religious experi- 
ence when reflectively treated, all the ideals of humanity ap- 
pear, for their origin, ground, and guaranty, to converge in 
one Ideal-Real. This Being of the World science calls by vari- 
ous titles, — such as Xature (natura naturans), or the one 
Force, of which all the varied forms of energy are species or 
examples; and places it under the "reign of law," in a course 
of evolution. By further reflective thought, philosophy arrives 
at the conclusion that the essential characteristics of this same 
Being of the World can only be expressed, or even conceived of, 
in terms of self-conscious and rational Personal Life. But 
religion has needs that science and philosophy, apart from 
the further reflective treatment which the latter can give to 



502 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

religious experience, taken in the large, are quite unable to 
satisfy. Through thousands of years of groping, and yet at 
times led rapidly forward by great religious teachers or by 
more popular movements, humanity has employed its profound- 
est thinking and loftiest imagination to construct a satisfac- 
tory ideal for religious faith. In this, its Object, religion finds 
something much more than science and philosophy can fur- 
nish as respects the ability to meet the moral, aesthetical, and 
practical needs of human nature. For to the religious con- 
sciousness the Object of its faith appears as One like man, 
an ethical spirit, — but immeasurably, and as yet incompre- 
hensibly superior to man, a perfect Ethical Spirit. 

The objections to this conception of the Object of religious 
belief and adoration, which arise on various empirical grounds, 
still persist, — if in vanishing degree. Neither man's physical 
environment, nor his moral and spiritual constitution, nor 
his social relations as thus far evolved, nor his demands for a 
speculative harmony and unity in his great postulate, com?- 
pletely correspond to his belief in the divine perfection. Faith 
is troubled, baffled, forced into conflict with a part of its own 
experience, on this account. But faith persists; and on the 
whole, as it seems to us, it can scarcely be denied that both 
science and philosophy are in the way of more firmly justify- 
ing its confidence as having a sure ground in reality; — but 
more particularly, as commending it for its practical efficiency 
in sustaining the life of conduct under the conditions in- 
flexibly set by man's present environment. Not all the ap- 
parent limitations to the ethical perfections are removed as 
the world-order is becoming somewhat better known. In fact, 
this knowledge is compelling many important modifications of 
what so-called "ethical perfection" actually is. But the phi- 
losophy of religion welcomes all these discoveries; for it con- 
siders them as self-limitations; and it is ready with a nobler, 
more rational, and morally more effective, conception of that 
absolute Person, who in wisdom, love, and holiness, thus limits 



GOD AS ETHICAL SPIRIT 503 

Himself. Nor will the popular religious belief and practice, 
in the long run, suffer in this way: for, to make the ideals of 
humanity more rational and uplifting can never turn out 
otherwise than an important service to humanity. The prin- 
ciple concerned may be stated in the following way: Absolute 
Will could not be Good-Will, were it not limited by a self- 
imposed deference and devotion to ethical and spiritual ideals. 
And finally, a study of actual religious experience shows — 
whether we pursue this study as the experience manifests it- 
self in the most illustrious individual examples or in the larger 
way in the history of the race, — that it is itself the most con- 
vincing argument for its own faith. The most valuable prac- 
tical conclusions are made sure for the individual who has em- 
braced the faith, and who is living according to the life which 
it requires. These conclusions seem also to be vindicating, 
while perpetually correcting and improving themselves, as the 
uplift of religion, in the fuller extent and perfection of its 
operation, moulds the social constitution and social relations 
of mankind. 



CHAPTER XXIII 
GOD AND THE WORLD 

What has sometimes been called the ultimate and most 
difficult problem of philosophy may be expressed in the form 
of this question: "How shall the mind conceive of those re- 
lations that are most fundamental and permanent, between 
God and the World ? " Indeed, the very use of the word 
relations in such a connection is accustomed to arouse a violent 
protest in some minds. Nor is the protest wholly without 
reason; and this reason may be introduced in the following 
way: For although the discussions of the later chapters have 
had a bearing upon this problem, without further explana- 
tions they may all seem only to have made it more difficult 
and confused. We began by making a distinction between 
the world, considered as a vast collection of individual exist- 
ences (of which the human race is a part) that are observed 
to be mutually interdependent and reciprocally related among 
themselves, and the " Being of the World " — an abstract 
conception — considered as First Cause, or Ground, of this 
same system of related individual beings. The particular sci- 
ences are seeking to discover what relations exist amongst 
the individual beings in time and in space. In their search 
they arrive at the conception of a Nature in which the indi- 
vidual beings are all included and which will serve as a term 
to designate them all. Then philosophy, in the form of meta- 
physics, insists that this Nature shall be conceived of, as it 
were, ontologically, — that is, as a Unity of Reality. It fur- 
ther proceeds, taking counsel with the various aspects of hu- 
man experience, to endow this Being of the World with a 
variety of personal characteristics. And, finally, religion, ad- 

504 



GOD AND THE WORLD 505 

vancing beyond where the philosophy of ethics and aesthetics 
ventures to go, makes out of this Being the Object of its 
faith and worship, by conceiving of it in terms of perfect 
Ethical Spirit. What, then, can be meant by speaking of 
God and the World, other than to inquire how the One Eeality, 
in one of its aspects, stands related to Itself, as considered in 
another of its aspects ? Still further : How can the term " rela- 
tion " be properly used in any such inquiry ? The three prin- 
cipal ways of responding to these questions are atheism, pan- 
theism, and theism. 

As to the use of the word relation, or its equivalent in some 
form, it is surely unnecessary to traverse again the ground 
already so thoroughly covered. Relation is the one universal 
category; for to think is to relate. And no opinion on any 
subject of human thought can be expressed, whether affirma- 
tively or negatively, whether completely agnostic or rigidly 
dogmatic, without virtually confessing the validity for human 
thinking and human judgment of this category. Even to place 
two nouns in connection by the word " and " is to propose a 
problem in relations. The mind does not escape from the 
necessity of thinking in terms of relation, whatever the value, 
and however negative that value, which it attaches to the two 
conceptions, "God and the World." 

We wish to divest the term Atheism from all traces of op- 
probrium, either ethical or theological. In its twentieth-cen- 
tury form it is customarily either agnosticism or materialism. 
These latter terms also we are not inclined to use in the way 
of an argumentum ad hominem. If the former of the two 
(agnosticism) is intended simply to deny that demonstrative 
or scientific proof, giving ground for a comprehensive con- 
ception of God when conceived of as Absolute Person and per- 
fect Ethical Spirit, has been as yet furnished; then there is 
really little more to be said than what has been said already. 
It remains only to recommend a further review of the consid- 
erations already advanced for the validity and the value of 



506 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

tenets that are virtually, but in large measure unconsciously, 
held by all the particular sciences; and that are expanded and 
confirmed in the form of a rational postulate by the moral, 
artistic, and religious experience of the human race in its 
historical evolution. In the case of any mind to which all 
this does not seem to afford sufficient evidence for an intel- 
lectual assent to, and a practical confidence in, the postulate 
of religion, there is little more of importance to be said. 

If the attitude toward the problem of " God and the 
World" which is charged with materialism means simply to 
assert a well-founded confidence in that view of so-called Na- 
ture which the physical and natural sciences have already at- 
tained, we are far enough from having any quarrel with it, so 
far as it goes. But it has already been shown that the quali- 
ties of spiritual life are invariably met with in all material 
existences, and in all physical forces and relations. Without 
some measure of an indwelling spirit, no individual Thing can 
really exist or actually perform any service by way of influenc- 
ing other things; or by co-operating with them in the architec- 
tonic of the one world. A fortiori, then, the conception of 
Nature in the large is, essentially considered, just nothing but 
an inert and inoperative omnium-gatherum, unless there is 
recognition made of an indwelling, self-ordering, teleological 
Will and Mind. 

The essential truth which the theistic position attempts to 
embody in its statement of the fundamental and permanent 
relations between God and the world, is that of the Divine Im- 
manence. As opposed to this truth, there have been, and still 
are, certain theological tenets which are as essentially non- 
theistic in their conception of these relations as are any 
avowedly atheistic tenets. This fact Professor Flint has ex- 
pressed (Agnosticism, p. 423) in the following somewhat 
startling fashion : " The two forms of agnosticism which di- 
rectly refer to God and religion are the theistic and the anti- 
theistic, the religious and the anti-religious." This so-called 



GOD AND THE WORLD 507 

"theistic agnosticism" robs the actual world of any momently 
vital relation with, the Divine Being by separating him from 
the actual and present system of things and selves. He is, 
indeed; but he is set apart. The real world was in the begin- 
ning made by Him; but he endowed it once for all with all 
the outfit necessary for it to run on forever, or at least until 
it shall have run down. Having imparted to it this self-de- 
pendent and self-included existence, the Creator left his cre- 
ation to the unchecked dominion of its own forces, under its 
own laws. God and the World were, then, once in reality re- 
lated; but all the present-day relations of the individual man 
are exhausted within the sphere of his intercourse with finite 
things and finite selves. ; 

This extreme of complete separation between God, the so- 
called Creator, and the World which is man's environment, 
physical and social, at the present time, can be maintained 
neither in theory nor in practice; neither on grounds of re- 
flective thinking nor in religious experience. The barest intel- 
lectual consistency inclines the mind to do away entirely with 
such an unnecessary hypothesis of an absentee God. For 
cannot a system of existences, which is now getting along so 
well without any Divinity to shape its ends, given time enough, 
have developed this ability rather than have been endowed 
with it some myriads of millions of years ago? And, indeed, 
if human reason has now no pressing need of the Absolute 
and Infinite to explain the dependent and the finite; or of a 
perfect Ethical Spirit as the present source and satisfaction 
of its moral, artistic and religious experiences ; why confess 
to such a need at all? 

If now we exclude from our consideration the various forms 
of atheism and agnosticism, there is still left a conception 
with a very complex and variable content, which has been 
developed by human thought and imagination in the effort 
to conceive of the relations existing in perpetuo between God 
and the World. Pantheism, says Professor Flint (Antithe- 



508 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

istic Theories, p. 334) "has been so understood as to include 
the lowest atheism and the highest theism — the materialism 
of Holbach and Biichner, and the spiritualism of St. Paul and 
St. John." But, then, " there is probably no pure pantheism." 

Pantheism has its origin in a profound and even deeply 
religious view of the world, and of the relations which its 
varied finite existences and transactions sustain to the Uni- 
verse of which they are only parts and on which they all de- 
pend. The feelings which contribute to excite and to support 
the pantheistic view are vague, but legitimate and powerful; 
they are chiefly these two: The feeling of the unity of the 
world, both of things and of selves, and the feeling of the mys- 
tery of the world. It is for this reason that the more reflective 
forms of pantheism arise in reaction against an extreme form 
of dualism (like that, for example, of John Stuart Mill) 
which posits a good but not omnipotent and absolute Deity 
in only a limited control of the world; or, the rather, in 
reactions against the conceptions of a Deism that aims to 
banish the feeling of mystery by presenting to the intellect 
precise and apparently final definitions of God and purely 
mechanical conceptions of his relation to the world. The same 
reasons account for the fact that a certain form of Theism, — 
for example, that advocated by Schleiermacher, who reduced 
religion itself so completely to a vague and mystical feeling 
of dependence upon the Unity of the World — so easily becomes 
almost or quite indistinguishable from certain forms of pan- 
theism. 

The fundamental difference between the theistic and the 
more purely pantheistic positions concern the work of reason 
in representing to itself the nature of the relations which exist, 
in fact, between the system of finite things and selves as 
known by the particular sciences and the Object of religious 
faith; — that is, between the World and God. As applied to 
the religious experience of man the question becomes: Does 
the world, conceived of as a totality, account for the origin 



GOD AND THE WORLD 509 

and development of self-conscious and self-determining spir- 
its, who pursue an ideal of a spiritual order and attribute to 
it a supreme worth; or must this world itself be conceived of 
as having its ground and the law and goal of its evolution, in 
an Absolute Ethical Spirit? To this question, Pantheism re- 
plies by a theory of identification: Theism answers with the 
conception of dependent manifestation, supplemented by a 
theory of Divine self-revelation. 

As soon, however, as pantheism begins to explain what it 
means by identifying the World and God, it is apt to intro- 
duce distinctions which profoundly modify, or perhaps com- 
pletely destroy, its own doctrine of identification. As soon, 
on the other hand, as the theistic conception begins to en- 
large itself, and to abandon the limitations and obvious errors 
of a quite untenable dualism, it seems compelled to modify, 
by extending, the conception of "dependent manifestation." 
Thus certain very significant approaches of the two views — 
the pantheistic and the theistic — are certain to show themselves 
in all their conflicting answers to the difficult problem: How 
shall the relations of the World to God be so conceived of as, 
on the one hand, to satisfy the postulates and conclusions of 
science and philosophy, and on the other hand, do justice to 
the convictions, sentiments, ideals, and practical life of re- 
ligion ? 

In the strictest sense of the word, all identification of the 
World and God is atheistic. The world, as we are now using 
the word, is the sum-total of existences, physical and psy- 
chical, of which man has experience. To say that this is God, 
and then to refuse to explain either subject, predicate, or 
copula, — that is, to make the judgment one of identification 
in the simplest form possible — is equivalent to denying the 
Being of God, in any meaning of the word God which the 
religious experience can tolerate, or of which the teachings 
and practical life of religion can make use. Even the most 
ignorant fetish-worshipper or the worshipper of some rela- 



510 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

tively insignificant and transitory natural phenomenon, knows 
better than this. The fetish or phenomenon is never wholly 
identified with what he worships. For he knows himself as a 
spirit; and he at least dimly knows that his god is a spirit, 
too. 

On the other hand, all the greater religions, as they develope 
advanced monotheistic views under the influence of reflective 
thinking and of the various forces that are constantly at work 
to produce a more complete unification of human experience, 
feel themselves impelled to admit certain important truths 
which the various forms of pantheism try to incorporate into 
their theories of identification. The very predicates and at- 
tributes of God, as a philosophical monotheism conceives of 
Him, are dependent for their meaning and validity upon the 
recognition of these truths. As we have already seen, for ex- 
ample ; " God is omnipotent," can mean nothing less than 
that there is no form of energy, physical or psychical, that 
has not its source and ground in the Divine Power. " God is 
omnipresent," can mean nothing less than that there is nowhere 
in the world, where God is not, in the fullness of the Divine 
Being ; all wheres are equally his whereabouts ; there is for Him 
no here nor there, which is exclusive of any other here or 
there. " God is omniscient " can mean nothing else than 
that there is no existence or happening outside of his cog- 
nitive consciousness; no movement or change in any thing, 
no phase of any animal or human consciousness, that escapes 
his all embracing co-conscious mind. All these relations of 
dependence, and all the manifestations of the Divine Being 
which these relations are, apply to the whole world. Col- 
lectively and individually — with an " all " which is what the 
logicians are accustomed to style the universal and, as well, 
the distributive all — is it true that finite beings " live and 
move and have their being " in God. 

The philosophical criticism of every form of pantheism 
must, therefore, begin its work with an examination into what 



GOD AND THE WORLD 511 

is really meant by applying the conception of identification 
to the relations of the World and God. Such an examination 
takes the mind back to a problem in the theory of knowledge; 
or in the application of abstract logical categories to real 
beings and to actual events. Logic was formerly accustomed 
to symbolize the so-called principle of identity, as it was sup- 
posed to underlie and to limit in a perfectly absolute way all 
thinking and knowing, by the abstract formula: A is A; or 
A=A. But, as we have already seen (p. 102f.) this formula, 
even when taken as a mere abstraction, turns out not to be 
strictly true. A in the place of subject to any sentence cannot 
be identical with, or precisely equal to A in the place of 
predicate. Nor can any conceivable meaning be given to the 
copula — whether this copula be the word " is " or the sign =, 
unless some difference be recognized between the two terms 
which the copula unites. The much profounder logic of the 
modern mathematics has therefore come to affirm that no 
relations can be stated, as relations merely, and without speci- 
fying or defining what objects are thus related; and that, be- 
tween any two real objects, there is always postulated at least 
one relation which obtains between no other knowable or con- 
ceivable objects. We cannot even say "I am I," without im- 
plying an important difference between the " I " that is sub- 
ject and the "I" that it predicates of itself; and of which it 
somehow affirms an essential and living unity with itself. For, 
to be really se //-identical can be nothing else than actually 
to live the life of a self-differentiating and self-identifying 
being. And one moment of such a life is given to a finite 
Self whenever it knows itself as self-conscious and self-de- 
termining. 

The attempt, therefore, to apply the category of identity 
to the Absolute and the sum-total of cosmic existences and 
happenings is above all other attempts of this sort illogical 
and absurd. And, indeed, this is never what pantheism, when 
it tries to take its terms out from behind the misty vail of 



512 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

feeling which envelopes them, really does. The World which it 
affirms to be God is never conceived of, in all its terms, pre- 
cisely the same as God. The affirmation, when strictly inter- 
preted, turns out to be one of relations and not of a strict 
identification. And the relations especially apt to be selected 
for expounding the real meaning of the copula — is, or equals 
to — are those of dependence and manifestation. Otherwise it 
would be quite as effective to say, " The World is the World " ; 
or " God is the World " ; or to say " God is God " ; as to say 
" The World is God." To identify the sum-total of existences 
and events, as known or knowable by man, with the Absolute 
or World-Ground, is to destroy the absoluteness of the Abso- 
lute, by making it dependent wholly upon the exercise of man's 
faculties of knowing. Whereas, to regard this world, and all 
that man can discover about or know of it, as only a very 
partial and temporary but real, dependent manifestation of 
God, is to make rational and consistent the beliefs and feel- 
ings which are appropriate to the Divine Absoluteness and In- 
finity. 

There is one class of relations, however, to which the cate- 
gory of identity, in its more strictly pantheistic signification, 
has absolutely no applicability whatever. Such are the rela- 
tions which arise and maintain themselves between persons. 
But religion, whether as belief, sentiment, or cult, — on the 
side of man at least, — is essentially a personal affair. Only 
a being which has developed some capacity for knowing itself 
as a person, and for entering voluntarily into personal and 
social relations with other beings, can be religious. Only as 
this same being attributes to cosmic existences the quasi-^ev- 
sonal and spiritual qualities which he recognizes in himself, 
does he regard these beings as objects of religious belief and 
worship. But personal beings cannot be unified. As long as 
I remain I, or am seZf-identical at all, I cannot wholly iden- 
tify myself, or be identified by others, with any other thing or 
person. This power of self-identification, with its reverse or 



GOD AND THE WORLD 513 

complementary power of distinguishing the Self from others, 
may indeed be lost; but when it is lost, the Self ceases, either 
temporarily or permanently, to exist at all. In a word, the 
conception of two persons, identical as persons, is a purely 
negative conception; it cannot be stated in terms that are not 
self-contradictory. Selves cannot be identified otherwise than 
by self-identification and self -differentiation. Both Panthe- 
ism and Theism, then, are forced to use such terms as com- 
munion or union, in order to express the most intimate and 
valuable relations which can exist between finite persons and 
the Divine Being. Or if such terms as absorption or re-en- 
trance into the Divine Being, be made the goal of pious de- 
sire and endeavor; unless these terms continue to bear a wholly 
inappropriate and purely physical signification, they cannot 
be interpreted as any species of identification. To say that 
the human Self becomes at death so absorbed in God as to 
return to the condition of an unconscious, or non-self-con- 
scious part of Divine Being, is simply to deny to the finite 
Self a continued existence. 

When, therefore, the conceptions of Pantheism and Theism 
are examined, in order to discover in what important respects 
they differ concerning the relations of God and the World, it is 
discovered that the differences all center about the idea of 
personality. To say that the World is God, or may be identi- 
fied with God, is equivalent to affirming that the sum-total 
of cosmic existences and processes implies for its explanation 
only an impersonal Ground. In brief, the only pantheism 
which is not also a-theism, differs from theism, in failing to 
rise to the full-orbed conception of the personality of God. 
In its sight the Being of the World is, indeed, somehow worthy 
of the mystical and worshipful feelings, and even of the 
devoted service, which is due to a Divine Nature. In the view 
of pantheism, however, this Being is degraded by the attempt 
to give to it the predicates and attributes of an Absolute Per- 
son. 



514 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

Yet here again it is true that pantheism has many shades 
of meaning and degrees of approach to the highest thoughts 
of theism. It often also has the figurative and flowery way 
of dealing with its conception of the world, which makes it 
correspond to the theory of mechanism as God. In this way 
the Divine Being of the World may come to be identified with 
all the cosmic existences and processes taken together, when 
conceived of after the analogy of a personal World-Soul, or 
of an Idea which the cosmic processes are realizing, or of a 
Universal but unconscious Life which is immanent in the 
phenomena. The God which the World really is, now becomes 
thought of as somehow transcending — potentially at least — all 
the phenomena of the universe, whether considered in their 
temporal, their spatial, or their more especially dynamic, re- 
lations. But this view brings the thought hopefully near to 
the theistic position. And from this view we need not be dis- 
turbed, and cannot be dislodged, by being told that God, when 
" qualified by his relation to an Other is distracted finitude." 
We may even admit that the Absolute is not " merely per- 
sonal"; until, at least, the term personal has itself been in- 
terpreted in a higher than the ordinary sense. 

While, then, Theism needs constantly to incorporate into 
itself those profound considerations which are emphasized by 
the more spiritual forms of the pantheistic theory, and to 
which certain religious sentiments of the highest value 
promptly and naturally respond, it cannot loosen its grasp 
upon the conception of a personal God; it cannot adapt itself 
to the impersonal, or imperfectly personal, Deity which Pan- 
theism offers in its stead. To do this is to dream rather than 
to think; the dreamer, if he continues sane and logical, is sure 
to awaken from his dream to find that he has embraced no 
more reality than that of a vanishing cloud. On this cardinal 
point the real and final issue between Theism and Pantheism 
is joined; the ultimatum is stated, upon the basis of which, 
if at all ; a lasting peace can be secured. A final choice must 



GOD AND THE WORLD 515 

be made between the ideal of self-conscious,, rational, and 
Ethical Spirit, as the Ground of all Beality, and all the many 
vague conceptions which the pantheistic theory has to oppose 
to this ideal. 

Further in favor of maintaining a firm tenure of the com- 
plete theistic position is that inevitable vacillation between 
atheism and the extreme of mysticism to which the more fer- 
vidly religious forms of pantheism are constantly liable. 
Spinoza, for example, in his doctrine of God as universal Sub- 
stance, or of a natura naturans devoid of personal qualities, 
was correctly judged to be atheistic by the orthodoxy of the 
seventeenth century. In the last chapter of his Ethica, how- 
ever, he states the theory of the Divine Love as the true moral 
bond and real union of all souls, in a manner which might well 
seem acceptable to the Christian mystics of all ages of Chris- 
tianity. 

The imperfect or erroneous conception of personality, which 
differences the pantheistic from the theistic notion of the 
Divine Being, becomes particularly obvious in the conceptions 
regarding man's nature and relations to God. By pantheism 
the personality of which the human individual is capable is 
not conceived of in its true, full, and highest significance. 
This defective conception is expressed in various figures of 
speech which are not only taken from physical relations but 
which are appropriate only to things and to the relations of 
things. Thus, for example, the Hindu doctrine, in its more 
purely pantheistic form, although it regards man's atman, or 
soul, as some sort of an indestructible entity, represents its rela- 
tion to the Atman, or World-Soul, as that of a portion or frag- 
ment to the whole. Union of the two is then made complete by 
the absorption of one in the Other to the loss of its own personal 
existence. All is Atman; and my atman is part of the imper- 
sonal All-Being; which may, indeed, as properly be called 
Brahma as Atman. The Buddhistic doctrine of the non- 
reality of the soul, on the contrary, destroys the personality 



516 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

of man in another way; — namely, by resolving it into a mere 
series of states, having moral significance indeed, but not im- 
plying or revealing that self-active, self-personifying power 
which is the essence of even finite personality. In a similar 
way, the modern pantheism of Schopenhauer and his follow- 
ers and successors, where it does not vacillate — as, indeed, it 
is constantly doing — between the theistic and the strictly pan- 
theistic relations which man sustains, for his origin, contin- 
ued existence, moral welfare, and destiny, toward the Absolute, 
is equally defective and confused. 

But Theism, while it regards man, like all other finite be- 
ings, as a dependent product of Nature, — a child of the World, 
so to say, — also places him in other and quite distinctly differ- 
ent relations than those which things and animals have, to 
the personal Ethical Spirit who is the Object of religious 
faith and worship. From the point of view of religion, man 
is " God's child " in a peculiar sense ; his nature is the incho- 
ate and undeveloped image of God, as a self -determining spirit; 
and therefore God and man may come into more definitely 
reciprocal relations. These relations it is the end of religion to 
establish and perfect. Thus man's personality, instead of 
being lost in the impersonal World-Ground, may be saved 
and raised to a higher potency by a voluntary, moral union 
with God, the perfection of Ethical Spirit. Eeflective think- 
ing, when influenced by ethical, sesthetical and more purely 
religious considerations, although not departing from a solid 
basis of approved truths of science and history, appreciates 
and defends this supreme good for humanity; while the re- 
ligious life aims at its practical attainment by the individual 
and by the race. 

The debate customarily summed up in the term "Nature 
and the Supernatural " offers, in the main, substantially the 
same problem to reflective thinking as that which has already 
been repeatedly discussed. The words employed in this term 
are complex and abstract; they cover conceptions which need 



GOD AND THE WORLD 517 

analysis and the making of distinctions, before any theory 
denning and relating the two can even be proposed with a 
fair show of reasons. In Kantian terminology, nature is the 
sum-total of known, or knowable, " phenomenal realities," 
Since we do not believe in such mythical beings as " phenom- 
enal realities," we have taken the term as it is accepted, em- 
ployed for purposes of research, and made constantly available, 
in the development of the particular sciences. Nature is, then, 
the sum-total of all known and knowable concrete and indi- 
vidual existences, considered as forming in their relations some 
sort of a system. To add the word phenomenal would now 
mean only this; that, inasmuch as these existences are known 
or knowable, they are, of course, perceivable, or imaginable, — 
that is, capable of appearing to us. But when the naive meta- 
physics which is necessary to the very constitution and de- 
velopment of all human knowledge of natural objects, is sub- 
jected to critical reflection, it discloses its own deeper mean- 
ing. Such conceptions as order, force, law, and evolution — 
leading as they do to the assumption of some kind of Unity in 
Reality that shall interpret and explain the reasons for such 
a Nature as man knows, or conceives of — impel the mind to 
adopt the belief in a Something -more, a Super-Being, of the 
World. 

The word super-natural suggests primarily a spatial relation. 
But to use the word in this way when applied to the World- 
Ground, to the Absolute Person, of philosophy, or to the Ob- 
ject of religious faith, is not only childish but intolerable to 
reflective thought. Nature and the supernatural are not to be 
thought of as two mutually exclusive spheres, lying either one 
above the other, or side by side. In interpreting the concep- 
tion of the Supernatural, however, we have only to recall how 
all the particular sciences, when pressed for a definition of 
the postulates on which they base their particular explana- 
tions, are obliged to confess to the presence, as immanent in 
nature, of a Something-More. Such a necessity was found 



518 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

to be true, not only of the system of things and selves, con- 
sidered as a self-contained and self-consistent whole, but also 
of each particular Thing or individual Self. In the restricted 
use of the word " natural," and in a confessedly legitimate use 
of the word " supernatural," there is no need of conflict be- 
tween the two. Were there not something-more, something 
super or supra, something over and above (in the logical and 
not spatial meaning of these words), in every natural exist- 
ence and in Nature as a whole, no particular real being could 
exist in, or could belong to, this natural System of real be- 
ings. Instead of the two terms — nature and supernatural — 
being antithetic and mutually exclusive, therefore, they are 
supplementary; and both conceptions are necessary for even 
making any approaches to an explanation that shall seem full 
and satisfactory. Indeed, the particular sciences proceed in this 
way. The Thing as considered by chemistry and biology is not 
a different being, in reality, from the same Thing as considered 
by physics or from the point of view of its practical uses by 
man. 

Every being in the world, as this world is empirically 
known, must therefore have its nature considered from an in- 
definite number of points of view. As known from a superior 
point of view, its whole nature often appears changed; but 
the change is not one which opposes its new nature to its 
old ; its superior nature does not conflict with or do away with, 
its inferior nature. The one Thing really has these different 
natures, as aspects of its one nature; and no thing is so poor 
as not to share in this infinite, and infinitely complex, wealth 
of natures rising " above " all particular natures ; and all 
of which have their ground in the all-comprehending Nature. 
The scientific conception of what is properly to be included 
under the term natural is, indeed, far more comprehensive and 
rich now than it has ever been before. Just on this very ac- 
count it is claimed that the natural no longer needs to be 
supplemented by the supernatural; that, indeed, the former 



GOD AND THE WORLD 519 

positively excludes the latter. This claim could be justifiable 
only on two conditions. Of these conditions^ one is that the 
conception of Nature shall be so illogically expanded as to 
include those points of view which belong more properly to 
the Supernatural; and the other is, that the natural and the 
supernatural shall be regarded as mutually exclusive spheres. 
But it has been agreed to limit the conception of the natural 
to that system of existences which is described and descrip- 
tively explained by the positive sciences. And this very system 
has been shown to have a Being Supernatural as its own ex- 
planatory real Principle, of which natural objects and events 
are all a dependent manifestation. 

More emphatically true is it that religion cannot dispense 
with the conception of the Supernatural. But with religion 
the Supernatural is God, — not more, but then no less. Ke- 
ligion cannot afford to hold this conception in antagonism to 
modern science and philosophy. According to its larger Ideal, 
then, every existence and every event is capable of being re- 
garded from two different but not antithetic points of view, 
as both natural and supernatural. For the totality of human 
experience, in the realm of scientific endeavor, and in the realm 
of ethical, sesthetical, and religious beliefs, sentiments, and 
ideals, demands the satisfaction afforded by doth points of 
view. 

In further interpretation of the conception connected with 
the term Supernatural, these three truths should be borne in 
mind: First, Nature, as known or knowable by man is not, 
and never can be, exhaustive of the Supernatural. Nature 
as known, or conceivable, is finite; God is infinite. Nature, 
as known or conceivable, is dependent and limited; God is 
absolute. Man's world is not, and never can become, a mani- 
festation of all that God really is. Second: God is worthy 
to be called the Supernatural One; since Absolute Personality, 
and perfect Ethical Spirit is, ever and essentially, over and 
above and more than, the sum-total of its own particular mani- 



520 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

festations. For, third, in God as the Supernatural One, as Ab- 
solute Will and Season, religion finds the ultimate source and 
explanation of all existences and all events. In a word, it is 
the conception of an Absolute Person, who is perfect Ethical 
Spirit, which unites and harmonizes the two otherwise con- 
flicting conceptions of the immanency and the transcendency 
of God. 

From the same points of view the conceptions of God as 
Absolute Person and of a world in a process of natural evo- 
lution, become more easily reconciled. The theological ob- 
jections that were brought against all theories of evolution, 
some half-century ago, have now — fortunately for both science 
and theology — largely been answered; or they have fallen into 
desuetude. The characteristic scientific tenet of this period is 
Evolution. But, quite as truly as ever, at the present time there 
are two forms of holding all such theories, that stand in dis- 
tinctly different relations to the theistic conception of the world 
as a dependent manifestation of God. One of these makes the 
process of development, as observed, imagined, or merely con- 
jectured, altogether self-explanatory. It posits a self-deter- 
mined (but not self -like) evolution, which results from " the 
self-generation of natural law "; in a word, it substitutes the 
conception of Mechanism for the conception of Absolute Per- 
son; it, therefore, leaves the Being of the World stripped of 
any characteristics which can satisfy man's ethical, sesthetical 
or religious ideals. It is essentially metaphysical; and as such, 
it is essentially anti-theistic. As a descriptive history, how- 
ever, and so long as it remains merely scientific, in the ac- 
cepted meaning of these words, the theory of evolution does 
not move along the same levels as Theism. It may easily clash 
with the alleged historical statements of the sacred writings 
of any particular religion, or with its traditions, standard con- 
ceptions, and dogmas, of the creation type. But it cannot, 
when thus confined to its own line of movement, conflict either 
with the fundamental conceptions of religion regarding the 



GOD AND THE WORLD 521 

relations of the World and God, or with the rational and duti- 
ful practice of the religions life. For the philosophy of re- 
ligion, no theory of evolution can be anything more than a par- 
tial and incomplete descriptive history of the way in which 
God has been and still is, creating the World. For piety, the 
picture of the process, which the modern theory of evolution 
draws, is far grander and more provocative of the aesthetical 
sentiments of awe and mystery, of the ethical impressions of 
wisdom, patience, and reserve of power, and of the religious 
feelings of dependence, gratitude, and ethical love, than any 
of the traditions or stories of any of the world's sacred writings 
have ever been. However much these traditions and stories 
may in the past have ministered to a child-like faith, they can- 
not at all compete with the modern theory of evolution in their 
ministry to a manly and mature faith. 

It should be borne in mind that to give even a quite complete 
history of the order of the development of any individual or 
of any species is a very different achievement from giving 
a satisfactory explanation of the real causes of this develop- 
ment. In general it may be said that no more can come out at 
the end than has been, either openly or secretly, provided for 
at the beginning. But, the barriers which are met by the 
theory in its effort to explain any individual product of evo- 
lution, are yet higher and more insuperable when the proposal 
is made to explain in terms of evolution the sum-total of all 
existences and all events, through infinite time and boundless 
space. It then appears evident that the very factors which 
the theory claims as its own rightful and necessary postulates, 
themselves imply, for their real existence and effective appli- 
cation to the task of world-building, the co-ordinating influ- 
ence of an intelligent Will. Or, the rather, these factors are 
themselves only so many different aspects of the manifested 
Power, the self-determining Mind, which is the Ground of the 
World as it is known in human experience. Thus the same 
line of scientific research which leads to the theory of evolu- 



522 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

tion, when reflected upon and understood in its deeper signifi- 
cance, leads to the conclusion of the philosophy of religion: 
Evolution itself cannot even be conceived of except in con- 
nection with the postulate of some Unitary Being, immanent 
in the evolutionary process, which reveals its own Nature by the 
nature of the Idea which, in fact, is progressively set into 
reality by the process. 

Every attempt, however, to apply the conception of evolution 
to the Divine Being, when more closely examined and thor- 
oughly thought out, is seen to defeat itself. If the conception 
of God is to serve as an explanatory principle, as a real 
"World-Ground," God must be conceived of as the adequate 
First Cause of this world as we actually find it. But the world, 
as we actually find it, is in a process of evolution. Any con- 
ception of a self-evolution of God, therefore, turns out to be a 
resort to the lower form of an unconscious and impersonal 
Mechanism, or a semi-personal and undeveloped World-Soul, 
as a substitute for the theistic conception of God as Absolute 
Person and perfect Ethical Spirit. 

The popular conceptions of God's relations to the World, as 
Creator, Preserver, and Moral Ruler, must all be interpreted 
in the light of the truths which have already been sufficiently 
discussed. In the lower forms of religion, natural phenomena 
are regarded as directly produced by some one of the gods, in 
furtherance of his particular purposes; natural objects are 
looked upon as either the works, or the seats and hiding- 
places, of the invisible, and divine spirits; and animals and 
men are either divine themselves or are descended from super- 
human ancestors. But even in some of these lower religions 
there are traces of a belief in some one truly "creator god/' 
or heavenly power, or heavenly father. Modern science re- 
gards the world as now known to be a ceaseless Becoming. 
But this conception is not at all destructive of, or even in- 
jurious to, the religious conception of God as creator and pre- 
server, so long as this ceaselessly becoming world is regarded 



GOD AND THE WORLD 523 

as a ceaselessly dependent manifestation of the Divine Will 
and the Divine Mind. 

The conception of Moral Enle involves, of necessity, more 
purely and expressly personal relations between God and the 
human race. But the Divine moral rule is not to he thought 
of as something supernatural, in the sense of being conducted 
quite apart from all the physical and social conditions of man's 
environment and development in history. On the contrary, 
the so-called Divine Government of the world is to be con- 
ceived of as immanent and operative in all these conditions. 
Through nature and society God rules the world. Or, the 
rather, the influences which shape man's nature, development, 
and destiny, as effective in his physical and social environment, 
are God's government of man. Such a view by no means ex- 
cludes the conception, so choice and essential to the highest 
religious experience and to the most consistent and effective 
life of piety, of God as the Father and Eedeemer of mankind. 
These figures of speech taken, — as all human language when 
employed to express the more purely personal relations of God 
and man must be taken — from man's relations to his fellows, 
both appeal to, and cultivate in their support, a large amount 
of trustworthy experience. But to deal with this subject crit- 
ically, and in accordance with the methods of philosophical 
investigation and argument, would take us too far into the 
fields of the psychology of religion, of theology and of re- 
ligious dogma. 

Similar considerations apply to the religious conceptions of 
revelation and inspiration as viewed from the point of stand- 
ing of philosophy. Their legitimacy in any sense whatever 
depends upon the conception of God as self-conscious, self- 
determining Ethical Spirit. Their validity can, therefore, 
neither be denied by a non-theistic and purely mechanical 
conception of the relations of God to the world; nor can it 
be restricted and confined in the interests of some particular 
department of truth, some single branch of human develop- 



524 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

ment, or some one form of religion or of theological dogma. 
God is the Revealer of all truth; the Inspirer of all spiritual 
excellences. And always, in some form and to some degree, 
when the reflective thinking of the "men of revelation" — 
whether in science, morals, art, or religion, — considers fairly 
and developes fruitfully the ontological meaning and value of 
these ideals of humanity, philosophy gives its authorization 
to the conception which they suggest and embody, of the Being 
of the World. That which the race experiences, and which 
the positive sciences partially reduce to formulas that state the 
observed relations of the phenomena, is indeed the manifesta- 
tion to finite spirits, in a process of historical evolution, of 
the reality of Infinite Spirit. But religion, with an assured 
confidence in its own experience, which is also a most impor- 
tant form of the evolution of humanity, extends its ideals on- 
ward beyond the place where art and morality feel obliged to 
stop. It thus affirms its conviction that this very process of 
evolution itself must be regarded as the manifestation of the 
divine purpose to bring humanity into a blessed state of ethical 
union and communion with that perfect Ethical Spirit whom 
religion calls God. 

With regard to another very important religious doctrine, — 
namely, the immortality of the individual, — philosophy has 
only one decisive consideration to propose, in addition to what 
has been already said (p. 2441), more particularly from the 
psychological point of view. This consideration depends upon 
the conception of God as perfect Ethical Spirit. It implies the 
moral continuity of the life of the finite personality; and also 
the belief that, if this personality survives the shock of death 
and continues its self-conscious and self-determining exist- 
ence, it will continue to be under the moral government of 
God. 

Neither science nor philosophy is at present able to pro- 
pose any certain, or even highly probable, solution for the 
problem of the future destiny of the race. In reality, this 



GOD AXD THE WORLD 525 

problem, too, depends for its solution upon the will of the 
Divine Being. And since religion conceives of God as perfect 
Ethical Spirit, it looks also into the future in the assurance 
of faith, that society will finally be redeemed, — a conception 
which religion offers to thought and imagination in the form 
of its doctrine of the Coming of the Kingdom of God. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 

Philosophy aims to reach a point of view from which all 
the various aspects, and indeed the entire history, of human 
experience shall appear as forming some sort of a Unity. As 
a speculation, it strives after a synthesis that shall seem to 
harmonize the conflicting thoughts and imaginings to which 
human life, under its present conditions, unceasingly gives 
rise. As a so-called " science of the sciences," it would gladly 
afford a sympathetic and authoritative interpretation to each 
one of the particular sciences, in such manner as to satisfy 
and confirm them all. But from its very nature, the aims and 
efforts of philosophy are destined to only an incomplete ful- 
fillment. The problems of human life and of physical nature, 
as they appear to the unscientific mind, are sufficiently com- 
plicated. But all the researches and discoveries of the posi- 
tive sciences only serve to disclose even more perplexing and 
profound problems. So far, however, as these belong within 
the sphere of science, strictly so-called, they admit, more or 
less freely, of the application to their solution of scientific 
methods. These are the methods of direct observation of 
facts or the critical examination of historical evidence, and of 
generalization on the basis of these facts, — aided, whenever this 
is applicable to the subject, by mathematical calculations, and 
verified or corrected by experimental demonstration. Where 
science ends, and philosophy begins — although it must be 
confessed that in practice no clear line of demarcation is uni- 
versally available — such strictly scientific methods cannot be 
employed. Critical and reflective thinking over the material 
provided by the various aspects of human experience, as al- 

526 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 527 

ready subjected to the methods of the positive sciences, is the 
only way open to philosophy for carrying on its efforts at a 
supreme and supremely harmonizing, but speculative synthesis 
of the assumptions and generalizations of all these more definite 
forms of human knowledge. At the best, then, philosophy can 
only aim at a more or less acceptable arrangement in a system, 
of rational opinions respecting the ultimate problems afforded 
by the experience of man, as a race. 

The considerations which justify the pursuit, and dignify 
the office of philosophy for the individual and for the culture 
and satisfaction of mankind, need not be repeated in this 
place. They can be scorned only by the ignorant, neglected 
only by the flippant; and they fail of being appreciated only 
by those who have no adequate views of the meaning of Nature 
and of the mystery and values of Human Life. As a matter 
of fact, too, philosophy has never ceased to be of vital interest 
and compelling charm to the human mind. Nor is there the 
slightest danger that in the future it will diminish in interest 
or sacrifice its charm. 

But the devotees of philosophy must observe two conditions, 
if they wish it to receive its deserts under its own name. They 
must neither think nor teach with arrogance and conceit of 
superior and conclusive wisdom; nor must they imagine by 
partial views, and verbal antics, or tricks of fancy, to satisfy 
fully the cravings of the human soul for truth and for reality. 
It is well also to remember that there is room for common- 
sense even in the very midst of the profoundest thinking and 
the loftiest speculations. The philosopher's walk may be under 
the sky and in the open air; but it should not be in the ring 
of the circus or of the menagerie. The philosopher's chair 
may be placed in the woods, or in the study, or on the aca- 
demic platform; but it should not be placed on the theatrical 
stage, or in the cell of the mad-house. If ever there was an 
age which needed sane, methodical thinking, based upon a 
due regard for the claims of science, history, morals, art, and 



528 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

religion; it is the present age. That the verdict of the future 
will confirm the judgments arrived at by such thinking is as 
sure as the unity of reason, through all time and under all 
conditions, can make anything sure. 

When, now, we come to consider the conclusions of philoso- 
phy with regard to the nature, limitations, and guaranty, of 
human knowledge, we find ground for neither of two extremes. 
Man's cognitive powers, actual and potential, are not such as 
to justify the assumption of perfect and cock-sure knowledge, 
— whether of any simplest truth or of the meanest example of 
nature's products and performances. But, on the other hand, 
the extreme of agnosticism, or of the sceptical distrust of 
knowledge, as concealed under such terms as relative, an- 
thropomorphic, etc., is equally unjustifiable. That there is no 
knowledge for man but human knowledge, and that such 
knowledge is essentially conditioned by the nature of the 
knowing subject, as well as of the object known, would seem to 
be a truth so primitive and obvious that none of its general 
corollaries need be questioned or made the subjects of dispute. 
Inasmuch as all cognitive activity implies actual relations be- 
tween real beings, and is itself an activity of relating on the 
part of the knower; to emphasize the relativity of all knowl- 
edge in the interests of philosophical agnosticism or scep- 
ticism is a mere begging of the question. Moreover, there is 
only one conceivable form of knowing which can be called 
absolute, even as respects the way in which the relating activ- 
ity involved in all human cognition can reach its highest terms. 
This is the development of knowledge which we call self-con- 
sciousness. But this form of knowledge, at its highest stage 
of development and in the case of the most trustworthy knower, 
is an " absolute," or assured and logically indisputable guar- 
anty of only the present existence, in the present phase of 
mental life, of the knower himself. By self-consciousness at 
the best, I only know that I am here-and-now existent as 
thinking, feeling, acting or suffering, in a certain way. And 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 529 

even this absolute knowledge is, when further considered, 
found to be like all other knowledge, an achievement imply- 
ing growth that is behind it on the part of the individual and 
of the race. This growth, like all mental growth, is condi- 
tioned upon innumerable forgotten experiences and uncon- 
scious influences; and it is all shot through and through with 
unrecognized and unverifiable assumptions and instinctive or 
rational faiths. Such, then, is the acme, the supreme achieve- 
ment, the incontestable conclusion, of human cognitive ex- 
perience. 

The moment, however, that the uncritically agnostic or 
sceptical attitude is assumed toward man's cognitive faculty 
and achievements in general, the mind is doomed either to 
a course of the most glaring logical inconsistency, or to one 
in the pursuit of which, with the effort to be logically con- 
sistent, it lands itself in the hopelessly absurd. Such are the 
exactions demanded by the faith which reason has in itself, 
whether this faith have respect to the claims of science in its 
discoveries of fact and of truth, or to the aspirations of mor- 
ality, art, and religion, after their respective ideals. 

In their critical processes, the conclusions of the Kantian 
criticism are as self-contradictory and self-destructive as are 
those of any other form of philosophical scepticism. The very 
description of the cognitive act which limits it to phenomena 
is psychologically inadequate and false. And to speak of the 
world of Things and Selves, as known by common experience 
and by the positive sciences, as merely the intellect's projec- 
tion, in the objective form, of a system of judgments concern- 
ing "phenomenal realities," is to misrepresent the nature of 
the cognitive process and to falsify the achievement of man's 
growing knowledge of nature and of himself. For, indeed, 
the very term "phenomenal realities," is a gross misnomer. 
Phenomena are of realities, and to realities. Knowledge is, 
essentially considered, such an actual commerce of realities 
as implies kinship, between the knowing subject, to whom the 



530 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

appearance (or ■" phenomenon ") is, and the object known, 
from which the appearance comes. Neither can these two be 
separated in the act of knowledge, in any such manner as to 
make it possible to regard the one as only the temporary prod- 
uct, or modification, of the other. 

The study of the metaphysics of the cognitive relation also 
makes clear the truth, that all theories of an unknown and 
unknowable "noumenal reality/' which is underneath or back 
of both knowing subject and object known, as a sort of sus- 
taining substance, only serve to provide a ghost-like abstrac- 
tion which is not needed; and which, if it were needed, is 
not fitted to describe the dynamic relations between the be- 
ings involved in every act of knowledge. 

All human knowledge is, therefore, of necessity not only a 
growth, but also a matter of degrees as respects its complete- 
ness and its certainty. Moreover, all human knowledge rests 
on certain assumptions, to dispute which is impossible; upon 
certain faiths and tendencies, or appetencies, partly of a bio- 
logical and physiological, and partly of a conscious and more 
distinctly rational kind. It is all relative, imperfect, more or 
less infringed upon by uncertainties, and forever limited by 
the constitution of the Universe as related to the constitution 
of the human mind. We ourselves are really much richer in 
content than we can know ourselves to be. And there is noth- 
ing in nature so poor and mean as not to be possessed of a 
wealth, as yet undiscovered and probably forever inappreciable 
by the human mind. 

In spite of these limitations, however, the learner may ap- 
proach the problems of metaphysics with a wise measure of 
confidence and no small stock of good cheer. And since meta- 
physics is only another term for man's crude or thoroughly 
reflected notions as to what he means by calling himself and 
others, both things and selves, real; and by distinguishing 
between actual events and relations and those which are only 
conjectured or imagined; all men are compelled to be either 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 531 

unconsciously or designedly metaphysical. Philosophy aims 
only at a truer, more profound, more critical and systematic 
theory of reality, than is either current in the popular mind, 
or is espoused and cultivated by the positive sciences. The 
first thing to be noticed in pursuit of this aim is this: When 
considered from the psychological point of view, all objects of 
human knowledge, in the very act or process of becoming 
known, are more or less definitively personified. Things 
known by the Self are made more or less self-like. They are 
known as dynamically related to the knower, and aa actively 
and passively related to one another. They stand in relations 
of space; occupying — each one — so much room, and attracting 
to itself, or repelling from itself, the others of like or unlike 
natures or affinities. Translated into the only terms of human 
experience which can give real meaning to such abstractions: 
— Things have significance for Selves, only as they appear to 
be wills, that resist, or oppose, or yield with more or less 
of effort on our part, to our wills; and that do this in 
accordance with more or less, to us, intelligible ideas. How 
far things do all this in the pursuit of conscious ideas of their 
own, we are increasingly puzzled to say. About some of them, 
which give to us satisfactory signs of being like what we come 
to know ourselves to be — namely, self-conscious and self-deter- 
mining minds — we have no doubt. They are our true fellows, 
the completed ( ?) selves, which we know ourselves to have 
become. The convincing signs of common bodily structure, 
common instincts, impulses, desires, and mental habits and 
mental development, are crowned by the unmistakable sign of 
articulate and logically constructed language. As to the other 
animals besides man, there is still, and perhaps always will 
remain, a considerable measure of doubt. From some points 
of view, they may be considered to be mere machines; from 
others, it is easy for primitive or ignorant man to look upon 
them as gods. Comparative psychology and biology are slowly 
finding their way to the truth which lies between the two. 



532 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

But down below these organisms, lies the mystery of the self- 
like nature and behavior of such things as the bacteria, the 
white blood-corpuscles, the living cells, the crystals, the mole- 
cules, the atoms, the ions; as well as of the planets or the so- 
called fixed stars. All these, if known at all, must be an- 
thropomorphically known; that is, they must be known as more 
or less self-like in nature and behavior. But the mystery as 
to how far they know themselves, or determine themselves, in 
this way, remains either wholly unsolved, or else a matter 
chiefly of quite uncertain conjecture. 

But no Thing, and no Self, can be known as apart from the 
world of Nature whose child it is, and in which it " lives and 
moves and has its being." And all the positive sciences, as in- 
corporating the growing experience and deepening convictions 
of the race, teach the comprehensive truth that this Nature 
is some sort of a Unity of Beality. It really is such a Unity; 
it is not merely made to appear to be, in orderly and sys- 
tematic form, by the creation or compulsion of man intel- 
lectual powers. The monstrous theory that man's intellect 
creates, rather than apprehends and appreciates, the oneness 
of the world. by which he is environed, whether in the form 
given to it by Kant, or by Schopenhauer, or by the doctrine of 
Maya, is intolerable both to common-sense and to the modern, 
positive sciences. But what all these philosophies have in- 
sisted upon — namely, that the conception of Nature, in its 
collective form, is anthropomorphic, cannot possibly be de- 
nied. A fortiori, then, it follows that this conception involves 
the postulate of a Universal Will, controlling the particular 
existences in time and space, in accordance with immanent 
ideas. This is what must really be meant by all talk of Caus- 
ation, Order, Law and Evolution, — conceptions without which, 
in their metaphysical import, the positive sciences cannot ad- 
vance a single step as explanatory of actual existences and 
events, in a System that claims Reality for its own. Without 
these conceptions, all the sciences are mere Schein, — fancies, 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 533- 

ghosts of abstractions, dreams, myths. But all this amounts 
to saying that the Being of the World, as represented by this 
conception of Nature, so far as known by man at all, is known 
as a Being of self-like characteristics. 

When the metaphysical eye is again turned inward, and the 
ontological consciousness emerges from its stage of naivete 
and becomes self-conscious, then the Self becomes aware of 
the meaning and the value of its own reality and of its own 
real place in the system of realities. It knows itself, by a 
process of development such as characterizes all human knowl- 
edge, and with varying degrees of fullness and accuracy, as, 
essentially considered, a self-conscious and self-determining 
Mind. It does not need " to go behind the returns " for this 
information. It discovers with certainty that it has been 
chosen by a decree of all-comprehending Nature for this high 
estate. What more effective way of showing appreciation and 
gratitude than by paying Nature back in her own coin of pure 
gold? Nature herself, in order to be worthy and competent 
for all this, must be conceived of as self-conscious and self- 
determining Mind. The larger, and the largest conceivable, 
possession of will, reason, and self-sufficiency, is allotted to 
that Universal Being which is regarded as the source and con- 
troller of all particular, related beings, in all spaces and all 
times. 

This extreme of anthropomorphism, if you will, is indeed 
not a naive and natural product of the untutored mind. It 
is, the rather, the achievement of the prolonged and highest 
development of the reflective thinking of the race. But it 
interprets to the " plain man " the fuller meaning of his as- 
sumptions, conjectures, and practical concerns with Nature; 
and it explains to the positive sciences the more real and 
deeper significance of both their ontological assumptions and 
their acquired principles. In a word, by reading external 
nature in the light of the revealed reality of the nature of the 
Self, philosophy substitutes the relatively clear, although frag- 



534 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

mentary and imperfect conception of an Absolute Person — 
an infinite, self-dependent, self-conscious and self-determin- 
ing Mind — for the vague and wholly abstract conception of a 
Nature of things and selves, to be taken in the large without 
further definition. 

But man is by no means all matter-of-fact, devoted to se- 
curing the supply of his material wants and the satisfaction of 
his intellectual interests. Man is also an idealist, — and this, 
in several somewhat different ways. His idealism is also 
matter-of-fact; and in all the history of the race, it has been 
most important and influential matter-of-fact. Nowhere in 
space or time do we find human beings who have lived and 
acted without influence from moral, artistic, and religious 
ideals. Indeed, without the impulse from these ideals, and 
the advances made through the actual pursuit of them, no 
real uplift of the race could ever have taken place. To prefer 
some kinds of inner states to other kinds, and some classes 
of deeds done to other classes of deeds, — in a word, to make 
distinctions in the values of conduct and character, — is to be 
human. To admire some objects, whether found in nature or 
made by man, rather than other objects, because the former 
speaks a language of joy and consolation to the soul, as the 
latter do not, is also to be human. And so far as we are will- 
ing to abide by the testimony of historical fact* rather than 
accept the unverified conjectures of pseudo-science (whether 
it takes the form of anthropology or sociology), we no- 
where find human beings who do not believe in and worship 
invisible and superhuman spirits, under the impulse to secure 
their own weal or avoid somewhat of impending woe. 

But man steadily refuses to believe that he has created these 
ideals wholly without any warrant in the larger Nature which 
begat and encompasses his own nature. He will have it that 
the invisible, superhuman spirits, who in large measure con- 
trol human destiny, themselves approve or disapprove of him 
and his doings, on grounds which correspond more or less 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 535 

perfectly to the ethical sentiments and judgments which he 
cherishes as his own. In the case even of those men who pro- 
fess no belief in such spiritual agencies as noting, or affect- 
ing, the conduct of man, the conception of Nature is almost 
sure to be endowed with more or less open or concealed, but 
genuinely ethical attributes. Or perhaps, some special part 
of the World- All, called Heaven, or Fate, or a " Power-not- 
ourselves," is treated as a moral being. But the ideal of 
monotheistic religion personifies boldly this Being of the 
World in terms of the perfection of Ethical Spirit. What is 
true of the moral consciousness of the race is also true, mak- 
ing the appropriate changes in verbal expression, of its aes- 
thetical consciousness. Nature is really beautiful. Her prod- 
ucts are worthy of aesthetical admiration. The being, called 
man, who appreciates and enjoys these objects, and who feels 
the impulse within him to produce by his own brain and hand 
something which shall share with nature its valuable artistic 
creative skill, is Nature's child. 

The summing-up of all the highest ideals of beauty, espe- 
cially in those forms which excite the sentiments of sublimity, 
mystery, awe, and the tragic passions and other experiences, 
is the Universe itself. Toward the Being of the World, there- 
fore, man feels himself compelled to take the supremely aes- 
thetical attitude, both of sentiment, and of judgment. Its 
awful catastrophes, its seemingly merciless destruction of its 
own choicest works, including its own spiritual children, do 
not lessen, but the rather greaten, this kind of aasthetical at- 
titude. And when Nature heals again the frightful wounds 
she has made, and with smiles endures the travail of produc- 
ing from her own bosom higher races, or better species and 
specimens of the same race, the human soul is in turn con- 
quered by the obverse forms of this sesthetical admiration. 

It is with no concession to fanaticism, or unnecessary mysti- 
fying, and with no respect or tolerance for cant — religious 
or otherwise — that we have used such terms as spirit and 



536 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

spiritual, as attributed to nature in the large. But fanaticism 
and cant ought not to avail to abolish such terms as these. 
To become a self-conscious and self -determining mind, under 
the influence of ethical and sesthetical sentiments and ideals, 
is to attain the reality of a spiritual existence, and the possi- 
bility of a spiritual development. In the definition of values 
there is no higher conception possible than this; in the king- 
dom of values, its realization is the supreme goal of human 
endeavor. To be a true and valid person, this is the type 
which, progressively and with nearer or more distant ap- 
proaches to perfection, must be realized. 

Now it is not by intellectual cultivation and achievement 
solely, or through the progress of the positive sciences alone, 
that the truth about the Being of the World is to be appre- 
hended and, being truly apprehended, appropriated in such 
manner as to realize the supreme values of human life and 
human development. Even the positive sciences, when culti- 
vated in the most " coldly intellectual " manner possible, re- 
veal the presence of the spiritual in the material, of the self- 
like in things, of the personal in nature, of Spirit in Matter, 
of God immanent in, and yet the transcendent First Principle 
of, the World. They are, however, accustomed to wink at all 
this, and to pass it by on the other side. And, so far as they 
conform to the claim to be engaged in discovering facts, 
classifying them, and arranging them in orderly sequences 
under the categories of causation and time, this course is per- 
fectly justifiable. But no man, by becoming a so-called sci- 
entist, ceases to be human; and the chances are that he is 
also bound to feel the more positively the call to become also 
something of a philosopher. As human, he is a moralist, an 
artist, and a religious being. And if he carries his philosoph- 
ical instincts and impulses far in the direction of an attempt 
at unifying experience on its many sides by some sort of a 
speculative synthesis, he is compelled to take the doctrine of 
values largely into the account in forming his conception of 
the Universe whose child, among other children, he himself is. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 537 

But man's conception of the Being of the World must at- 
tain to some kind of unity. We cannot tolerate the thought 
of two Universes, to be kept forever and essentially considered, 
apart; one a world of pure mechanism and blind (?) law and 
meaningless force, rushing onward to an irrational goal; and 
the other a world controlled by personal Will in the pursuit, 
and progressive realization of moral and aesthetical ideals. 
Man's spirit, as a totality, craves the satisfactions of a reality 
that provides for these ideals. Himself a spirit in the world, 
he will have Spirit in his World; and this, in order that the 
World may the better answer to his total Self. But the evi- 
dence for the reality of human ideals is confessedly not of 
the same character as that with which the physical and natural 
sciences deal. Nor can the methods for testing its presence 
and estimating its value be precisely the same. It will not 
do, however, to say that morals, art, and religion, are matters 
of mere conjecture, fields of experience in which any indi- 
vidual may hold with assurance and safety such opinions as 
he will. On the contrary, many kinds of the facts upon which 
opinion must be based are more abundant and more sure in 
ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion, than they are 
in the general field of the more positive sciences. But since 
both the underlying postulates and the ultimate conclusions 
of morality, art, and religion have rather to do with a doctrine 
of values and with the construction of truths valid for conduct 
and for life; it is the pro founder sentiments and higher flights 
of imagination which are given more influence in forming a 
philosophy of the ideal. Thus the whole spirit of man, while 
consciously remaining faithful to the conclusions of the par- 
ticular sciences as to the nature and laws of those concrete real- 
ities with which they, respectively deal, is stimulated by moral, 
artistic, and religious needs and aspirations to frame a concep- 
tion of the World-Ground as the Ideal-Beal. More definitely, 
and by uniting the claims of every form of his idealizing, he 
regards the Being of the World as essentially that of a Personal 
Spirit who is aesthetically and ethically perfect; and all the 



538 KNOWLEDGE, LIFE, AND REALITY 

phenomena, both physical and psychical, then become inter- 
preted as a dependent manifestation of Him. 

Philosophy, however speculative it may seem or really be, is 
not properly designed, or safely employed, for purposes of 
speculation only. Its problems are not questions to be con- 
sidered in the mood of the reckless adventurer or of the unin- 
terested dilettante. There are no other fires so dangerous for 
the soul to play with as those that burn in the bosom of reflec- 
tion. Friends may pardon, and society may not care, if the 
treatment accorded to them is persistently flippant. But phi- 
losophy never. Its test of truth is not pragmatic, in any defi- 
nite and intelligible meaning which can be attached to that 
much-abused word. But its teachings, although they require 
hardships, the renunciation of an absorbing passion for the 
things of subordinate value, and even oftentimes the scorn of 
ease and pleasure, are meant for the comfort, guidance, and 
uplift, of human life. We are all pupils; we shall never 
know otherwise than dimly, and except in part. And God's 
Universe is our great Teacher, although we are indeed small 
enough part of it. But if we have the philosophic, which is 
also the truly scientific spirit, we shall raise our voice to It 
and say, in words of ancient wisdom: 

"From the unreal lead me to the real. 
From darkness lead me into light. 
From death lead me to immortality." 



THE END 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Absolute, the, as Personal, 18, 
265, 266f. (Chap, xxi), 4601, 
464f., 471, 472f., 478f., 503, 550; 
negative concept of, criticized, 
161f.; as identified with Na- 
ture, 262, 499, 463, 501; as 
self-determining Mind, 266f., 
479f., 498, 510f.; only adjec- 
tival use of the word, justifi- 
able, 464f., 468, 469, 481f., 511. 

Absolutism, the philosophy of, 
157, 161, 464f., 469, 511f., 513, 
515. 

^Esthetics, psychological basis 
of, 366f., 368f., 378f., 3841, 
3981, 4091, 420; physiological 
basis of, 3681, 392f ., 399f ., 409 ; 
objective character of, 3701, 
424; use of judgment in, 3741 ; 
ideals of, 3781, 3841, 420, 423, 
424; diversity of opinions in, 
3791; effective factors in, 4091, 
411, 4141, 420, 423; place of, 
in culture, 4281; influences of, 
in religion, 4491, 493. 

Agnosticism, nature of the phi- 
losophical, 421, 991 (Chap, 
vii), 127, 149; the Kantian, 
in especial, 43, 961, 1371, 
1541; as legitimate and neces- 
sary, 1271, 134, 1401, 143, 1451, 
147; limits of, 1281, 132, 135, 
1461; kinds of, in religion, 139, 
142, 5061 

Anaximandeb, doctrine of, 4. 

Anthbopomobphism, term as ap- 
plied to knowledge, 1171, 185, 
195, 1991, 201, 206; and to all 
theories of reality, 1851, 1951, 
206, 448; special uses of, in re- 
ligion, 4481, 4541 

Antinomies, specious use of the 
word, 150; the term a mis- 



nomer, 1501; philosophical doc- 
trine of, confuted, 151. 

Aechitectube, the utilitarian and 
the sesthetical points of view, 
in, 389, 390, 392; as appealing 
to the eye, 3901, 392; the 
Greek and the Muhammadan, 
3921; as allied to sculpture, 
3931 

Abistotle, on philosophy, 1, 4; 
his realism, 35, 101 ; and con- 
ception of formal logic, 101, 
171; his doctrine of the cate- 
gories, 17 If.; on nature of 
ethics, 272, 277, 319, 3241; and 
of so-called " general justice," 
319, 325; on falsehood, 320; on 
the nature of morality, 325. 

Abnold, Matthew, quoted, 158, 
161, 357. 

Abt, basis of, in human nature 
(Chap, xvii), 3771, 3841, 3911, 
3981, 4001, 4091, 420, 424; 
ideals of, 3771, 3811, 3841, 387, 
398, 420, 423, 424; nature of 
the art-object, 3841, 388, 3911, 
396, 403, 412, 414, 420, 423; 
how far imitative, 3981, 403. 

Aets, the, classification and na- 
ture (Chap, xviii), 3851, 4091; 
landscape-gardening, 3861, 388; 
architecture, 389, 3921; sculp- 
ture, 3941; the pictorial, 3971, 
399; of music, 3991, 402, 403; 
the poetical, 4041, 406. 

Atheism, its position in phi- 
losophy, 5051, 509, 519. 

Atman, Hindu conception of, 
450, 515; relation of individual 
soul to, 5151 

Beauty, spirit of, attempt to 
analyze, 3811, 3841, 387, 395 

541 



542 



INDEX 



(Chap, xix), 424, 426f., 535f.; 
as implying plan in the object, 
384f., 396f., 398; quality of 
life-likeness in, 387, 395, 397, 
402, 415; kinds of, 3921, 409f., 
410, 413, 414, 416, 418; of sub- 
limity, 41 If. ; beauty of grace, 
413f.; and of the orderly, 414; 
and of the luxuriant, 416f.; 
and of the handsome, 418f. ; as 
related to morals, 426f., 428. 

Being of the World, as abstract 
phrase, equivalent to Nature, 
199, 200f., 216, 217, 357, 424f., 
451, 462, 480, 504; compli- 
cated modern conception of, 
202f., 207f., 220, 461f.; compre- 
hensiveness of term, 216, 357, 
504; ideal character of, 358, 
373f., 424f., 434f., 491, 501, 
502, 504; as Ethical Spirit, 
436, 463f. (Chap, xxii), 491, 
504f., 535f. 

Bradley, Mr., his doctrine of the 
antinomies of reason, 152. 

Browning, quoted, 352. 

Buddhism, philosophic sects in, 
3; its doctrine of Karma, 450f., 
486. 

Buchner, his conception of Mat- 
ter, 261 (note). 

Categories, the, Kant's view of, 
591, 100; denial of, the ulti- 
matum of philosophical scepti- 
cism, 100, 1481; difficulty of 
enumerating them, 1481, 1601, 
1711, 174; not impotencies of 
intellect, 161, 433; as involved 
in all cognition, 1621, 433; 
enumeration of, 164, 216; essen- 
tial nature of, 1651 (Chap, ix), 
174, 175, 177, 191, 216, 433; 
necessity of harmonizing the, 
1771; as used in the concep- 
tion of Nature, 2161, 2231, 
2581, 263, 293, 463, 501. 

Cause, Kantian conception of, re- 
futed, 1141 ; relation of, to the 
"objectivity" of Things, 1151, 



168, 173, 186, 210, 212; origin 
of conception of, 1161, 1181, 
168, 1691, 173, 189; the dy- 
namic view of, 189, 222. 

Certainty, the grounds of, 1291. 
1331, 153, 1621, 460 (see also 
Agnosticism, and Knowledge). 

Challis, quoted, 221. 

Chalybaus, on the spirit of phi- 
losophy, 22. 

Change, as a category, of all 
things, 1011, 104, 112, 188, 193; 
and of the Self, 103, 107, 136, 
198, 225 (see also Evolution). 

Character, importance of the 
conception in ethics, 3091; na- 
ture of the conception of, 310. 

Chwang-Tsze, quoted, 107. 

Clerk-Maxwell, his conception 
of energy, 221, 256; and of 
matter, 2561 

Cognition (see also Knowl- 
edge), nature of, analyzed, 6 If., 
66, 1551; always an activity, 
661, 155 ; dependence of, on will, 
661, 169; necessary forms of, 
161, 1741, 177, 191, 216; as 
giving a clue to the, conception 
of causation, 1691, i73, 189. 

" Common-Sense," its view of the 
constitution of Things, 451 

Conduct, the conception of, 
analyzed, 2711, 294; as subject- 
matter of ethics, 271, 2761, 
2941; as governed by sesthetical 
considerations, 3661 

Consciousness, the so-called 
"discriminating," 651, 71, 1031, 
195, 197, 225; the conative, 
801, 169, 173, 189; of the Self, 
821, 841, 2261, 2281; not com- 
parable to a " stream," 226, 
235; of being "free," or of 
ability, 3051, 310, 452; and of 
imputability, 3071, 4521; the 
sesthetical (Chap, xvii), 3681, 
3721, 374, 4091; the religious 
(Chap, xx), 431, 436, 4421, 
4491 

Criticism, nature of the phi- 



INDEX 



543 



losophical, 42f. (Chap, vii), 126, 
130, 137, 143; as legitimate, 
126f., 137; limits of, 128; dis- 
tinctions involved in the Kan- 
tian, 137f. 

Critique, the Kantian, aim of, 
38f., 43, 58, 59, 100, 137f. 

Curiosity, nature of the intellec- 
tual, 11 If. 

D'Alviella, quoted, 492f. 

Descartes, his conception of phi- 
losophy, 5; his theory of knowl- 
edge, 91, 146f. 

Dogmatism, nature of, 42. 

Dualism, as a school in phi- 
losophy, 44f., 46, 489; valid 
claims of, 47f.; but, in system- 
atic form, discredited, 50f.; in 
religion, 489f. 

Duty, the conception of, in ethics, 
329f., 334f.; as apostrophised, 
330. 

Eclecticism, in philosophy, 42, 
44. 

Energy, modern scientific con- 
ception of, 220f., 222 (note), 
256; objectivity of, 221; storing 
of, 221f. (see also Force). 

Epictetus, quoted, 490. 

Epistemology, as a department of 
philosophy, 58, 94f. 

Ethics, special relation of, to phi- 
losophy, 17f. (Chap, xiii), 270f., 
338f.; its sphere, 268f., 277, 
325f., 338f.; and divisions, 
269f., 277; scientific conception 
of, 270f., 275; nature of its 
facts, 27 If., 275f. (Chap, xiv), 
295f., 339f.; place of judgment 
in, 282f ., 285f ., 289f ., 297f . ; sig- 
nificance of motives in, 293, 
325f.; evolution of, in the 
race, 300f., 337; ideals of, 312f., 
328, 336f., 355f., 361f.; concep- 
tion of law, as applied to, 33 If., 
333f., 335; schools of (Chap, 
xvi), 337f., 339, 340f., 343f., 
353f.; Legalism in, 339, 340f., 



355; Utilitarianism in, 343f., 
346f., 348f., 355; Idealism in, 
355f. 

Eucken, quoted, 432; on the "in- 
strumental theory" of evil, 
486. 

Everett, Prof. C. C, quoted, 430. 

Evil, Problem of, from biological 
point of view, 484f.; "instru- 
mental theory" of, 485f.; as a 
theodicy, 486f., 488, 490f., 494; 
in the lower forms of religion, 
489; Christian view of, 492f., 
494. 

Evolution, assumptions of, 224, 
521; kinds of the theory of, 
521f. 

Faith, of intellect in itself, 120f., 
123; as ontological in charac- 
ter, 124f., 149f., 434f., 444; as 
related to knowledge, 138f., 
454, 458, 459f.; Object of, in 
religion, 434f. (see also, God). 

Feeling, function of in cognition, 
61f., 68f., 74; the, "of effort," 
70f. 

Feelings, the so-called "intellec- 
tual," 69f., 72f.; the sesthetical, 
74f., 366f., 368f., 400; the 
ethical (Chap, xiv), 280f., 289, 
294f., 339f.; of approbation and 
disapprobation, 289f.; and of 
merit and demerit, 291f.; spe- 
cial appeal of music to, 400f. 

Fichte, quoted, 41; on the moral 
World Order, 363. 

Flint, Prof., on the kind of Ag- 
nosticism, 506f.; and on Pan- 
theism, 507f. 

Force, as a category, I80f., 186, 
189, 218, 256f. (see also 
Energy) ; as a unifying cause, 
186f., 189f., 222, 223f.; the so- 
called "vital," 190f. 

Freedom, problem of, as related 
to the nature of the mind, 238f., 
243, 245f., 247f., 302f.; nature 
of, as constituting moral Self- 
hood, 301f., 310, 328f., 331, 



544 



INDEX 



3461; arguments for and 
against, 3021, 306f.; as deter- 
mining personal character, 310, 
452; in the life of religion, 
452f. 

God, as Object of faith, in re- 
ligion, 441f., 450, 458f., 498f., 
502 ; so-called " ontological argu- 
ment " for, 442, 458f.; sesthet- 
ical sentiments toward, 449f.; 
as source of morals, 450f., 452; 
conception of, as anthropomor- 
phic, 454f.; as the World- 
Ground, 456f., 460, 464f., 468f., 
4781, 506f.; alleged "vision 
of" illusive, 458f.; the so-called 
" consciousness " of, 458f.; as in- 
finite and absolute, 464f., 4661, 
468, 471, 472f., 478, 498f., 520f.; 
as Ethical Spirit (Chap, xxii), 
484f., 486f., 488, 496f., 498, 
523f . ; metaphysical predicates 
of, 479f., 498, 510; omniscience 
of, 481f., 510; co-consciousness 
of, 482f., 517, 518; evidences for 
goodness of, 488f., 4911; holi- 
ness of, 4961, 498; doctrine of 
his immanence, 5061, 508, 536; 
pantheistic conception of, 5081, 
512; as "First Cause," 522; 
and Moral Ruler, 523. 

Greeks, philosophy among the, 
3, 33, 359; their discussions, 33. 

Haeckel, quoted, 23. 

Hartmann, von, quoted, 49; on 
the sources of religion, 439. 

Hedonism (see also Utilitarian- 
ism), nature of the older form, 
343; of the newer forms, 3441, 
354. 

Hegel, his definition of phi- 
losophy, 6f; view of relations 
between metaphysics and theory 
of knowledge, 57; criticism of 
current ontology, 162; on the 
nature of the art-object, 412. 

Herbart, on relations of phi- 
losophy to psychology, 16; on 
neglect of philosophy, 23, 160. 



Hodgson, Shadworth, quoted, 1, 

160. 
Hopkins, Prof., on the Upani- 

shads, 475. 
Humboldt, quoted, 318, 437. 
Hume, his theory of "objective" 

knowledge, 114. 
Huxley, quoted, 2631 



Idea, the, Platonic conception of, 
4, 21. 

Ideal, philosophy of the, 30, 
2691; nature of the Moral 
Ideal, 3281, 3361, 3551, 3611; 
and of the ^Esthetical, 3781, 
3841, 420, 423, 424; the Ideal- 
Real (see the World-Ground, 
and God). 

Idealism, as a school of phi- 
losophy, 44f ., 53 ; early forms of, 
46; of India, 481; in need of 
realism, 46, 59; in Ethics, 338, 
3561, 3611; and in ^Esthetics, 
378, 384f, 420, 4231 

Ideas, the so-called " innate," 
1201, 234; as immanent in 
things, 1911, 2321, 2401; "of 
value," 2341 

Identity, Principle of, as used 
in formal logic, 1011, 106, 
511; its validity discussed, 
1021; as applied to the Self, 
1031, 107, 511; and to Things, 
104, 112; always a metaphysi- 
cal formula, 106, 1181; as ap- 
plied to relations of the World 
and the Divine Being, 51 If., 
513. 

Imagination, in the appreciation 
of beauty, 3751, 378; in science, 
3761, 446; in construction of 
ideals, 3781, 446; especially of 
religious faith, 4461 

Immortality, possibility of, for 
the mind, 2481, 521; theologi- 
cal doctrine of, 251, 5241; as 
dependent on conception of God, 
as Ethical Spirit, 524. 

Infinite, the, as identified with 



INDEX 



545 



the Unknowable, 4641, 467, 469, 
472f. 
Intellect, function of, in cogni- 
tion, 6 If., 112, 297; logical 
satisfactions of, 112f., 118f., 
141; primary faiths of the, 
119f., 121, 124; ethical signifi- 
cance of, 297f. 



Jacobi, " faith philosophy " of, 
120f. 

Judgment, as element in all cog- 
nition, 62f., 64, 107; the "psy- 
chological," 64f.; the cognitive, 
its nature and goal, 107, 133f., 
374f.; in morals and religion, 
140f., 282, 290, 314f.; nature 
and origin of the ethical, 282f., 
285f., 287, 289f., 297f.; and its 
"internalization," 295f., 3451; 
diversity of, in morals, 314f.; 
virtues of the, 318f.; the sesthet- 
ical, 374f. 

Kant, his conception of philos- 
ophy, 5f., 35, 57, 341; and its 
divisions, 6; philosophic aims 
of, 35, 60; his view of meta- 
physics, 57; dominant interest 
in morals, 58, 138, 341f.; his 
doctrine of the " categories," 
59f., 171f.; defective theory of 
knowledge, 68, 96f., 114f., 252; 
doctrine of " noumena," 96f., 
156, 252, 517; relation of, to 
Hume, 113f.; his treatment of 
causality, 114f.; his distinction 
between faith and knowledge, 
137f. ; conception of mathemat- 
ics, 144f. ; and doctrine of an- 
tinomies, 150, 151; denies pos- 
sibility of metaphysics, as on- 
tology, 154; criticizes Aristotle, 
171f. ; but adopts his division 
of judgment, 172f.; his legal- 
ism in ethics, 341f., 343, 355f.; 
theory of art, 384f.; his doc- 
trine of the sublime, 41 If.; on 
the ontological argument, 441f. 



Karma, Buddhistic conception of, 
450f., 486. 

Knowledge, philosophy of, its 
problems, 57, 100f., 122, 529; 
its method debated, 57, 529; as 
related to metaphysics, 57f., 
1241, act of, analyzed, 6 If., 
661; part of judgment in, 62, 
641, 93; as activity, 661, 155; 
influence of sesthetical feelings 
upon, 741; and of moral emo- 
tions, 751, 1401; as involving 
Eeality, 771, 88, 1531, 155, 
1621, 4601, 5291; kinds -of, 
781; of the Self, 79, '821, 84, 
921; of Things, 851, 871, 1621, 
165; degrees of, 901; growth of, 
931, 104, 112, 470; as related 
to life, 95, 143; limits of, 951, 
961, 100, 136, 1381, 4701; not 
of phenomena, 961, 529; pre- 
suppositions of, 1011, 1191; 
necessarily anthropomorphic, 
1951, 448, 4541, 5291, 536. 

Koran, the, on the unity of God, 
481. 

Landscape-Gardening, material 
and ideals of, 3861; the Jap- 
anese, 388. 

Law, origin of the conception of, 
1121, 1171, 1821, 330; import- 
ance of the category of, 1891, 
191 ; as used in ethics, 330, 
3321, 335, 3391, 341; Kantian 
view of, criticized, 3411 

Leibnitz, his conception of phi- 
losophy, 5. 

Localization, by the senses, 7 If. 

Locke, his conception of philos- 
ophy, 5, 15; influence of Essay 
of, 151; on nature of morality, 
325. 

Lotze, quoted, 9, 101, 29, 327; 
on the "essence" of virtue, 
3271 

Mathematics, as applied to 
things, 1661, 2151, 411; the 
so-called "pure," 2151; the 



546 



INDEX 



mathematically sublime, 41 If. 

Matteb, as abstract, general con- 
ception, 254f., 257, 259, 261 
(note) ; attempts of science to 
define, 2551; as having mass, 
256f.; and needing to be sup- 
plemented by the conception of 
Mind, 257f., 261, 536. 

Maya, the doctrine of, 48f. 

Mechanism, theory of, assump- 
tions involved in, 215f. ; not ap- 
plicable to development of the 
Mind, 240f. 

Metaphysics, Aristotle's concep- 
tion of, 1, 5, 172; relation of, 
to theory of knowledge, 571, 
1061, 1541; of the principle of 
identity, 1061, 1181; as a 
theory of Reality (Chap, viii), 
1581, 175, 182, 196, 2641, 
4401; the method of, 1581, 160, 
196; ignorant contempt of, 
1601; as doctrine of actual re- 
lations, 1821, 2641; ultimate 
problem of, 2641, 440; as neces- 
sary to religion, 4411 

Mind, philosophy of (Chap, x), 
2311, 235; not a "stream of 
consciousness," 2261, 235; na- 
ture of the reality of, 2351, 
2371, 239; as self-determining, 
2391, 243, 2451, 248; but sub- 
ject to physical influences, 2481; 
as immanent in Matter, 2571, 
2611, 536. 

Monism, as a philosophy, 481, 51, 
4891; Indian form of, 481; per- 
manent claims of, 491, 511 ; 
task of, 5 If.; materialistic form 
of, 53; religious form of, 4891, 
494, 498. 

Moral Law, the, origin of the 
conception of, 330, 3311, 3331, 
335. 

Moral Philosophy (see also 
Ethics), as branch of meta- 
physics, 17, 289, 274, 3091, 
3381; schools of, 3381 ( 

Music, sesthetical characteristics 
of, 3991, 403; its peculiar ap- 



peal to the feelings, causes of, 
4001; freedom of, as an art, 
402; as imitative of nature, 
403. 

Naturalism, the scientific, 2631, 
5161, 522; as needing to be sup- 
plemented by conception of the 
Supernatural, 5171, 5211; evo- 
lutionary theory of, 5221 

Nature, Kantian theory of its 
"objectivity" refuted, 1141; 
modern scientific conception of, 
2081, 211, 214, 216, 222, 2581, 
5161; as applied to things, 
209, 2111, 5161, 5331; as ap- 
plied to the system of Things 
and Selves, 216, 222, 2231, 
2581, 263, 293, 463, 501; but 
implying immanent Spirit, 2591, 
2631, 293, 383, 422, 4241, 429, 
4631, 501; poetical uses of the 
word, 2601, 357; as implying 
moral qualities, 3571, 360; as 
sesthetical, 365, 383, 422, 429. 

Newton, dictum of, as to gravity, 
222. 

Noumena, Kant's doctrine of, 
961, 156, 252, 517. 

Number, category of, as employed 
by science, 2151 

Obligation, feeling of, analyzed, 
2791, 330; not a pleasure-pain 
sensation, 2801; source of the 
compulsion, 2811, 2841, 330. 

Painting, characteristic sesthet- 
ical qualities of, 3971; as imi- 
tative, 3981; schools of, 3991 

Pantheism, varieties of, 508, 
514; fundamental differences 
between, and theistic concep- 
tions, 5081, 5.111; as applied to 
personal relations, 513. 

Parmenides, his conception of Na- 
ture, 261. 

Pfleiderer, on the sources of the 
Aryan religion, 438. 



INDEX 



547 



Phenomena, misuse of the con* 
ception of, 156f., 529 (see also 
Things). 

Philosophy, conception of, 1, 5, 
8, 19f., 31f., 56, 430f., 526; in 
China, 3; in Japan, 3; among 
Muhammadans, 3; its origin in 
Greece, 3f.; the so-called "nat- 
ural," 4, 195f.; relation of, to 
theology, 5, 430, 504; Kant's 
view of, 5f.; relation of, to sci- 
ence, 8f., 14f., 19, 26f. (Chap, 
x), 526; as an independent dis- 
cipline, 8f., 526; deductive 
theory of, abandoned, llf., 527, 
528; causes of distate for, 12f., 
527f.; special relations of, to 
psychology, 15f., 25f.; the so- 
called "moral," 17, 269, 274, 
309f., 356f.; "problem" of, 
19f., 504f., 530; divisions of, 
20, 28f., 30; method peculiar 
to, 2 If., 24, 38, 530f.; spirit of, 
2 If., 23; studies especially re- 
lated to, 25f.; value of history 
of, 26f.; as analytic, 27f.; as 
synthetic, 28; schools of 
(Chap, iii) ; influence of tem- 
perament in, 38; limitations of, 
40f., 44f. 55f., 528, 529; need 
of compromises in, 44f., 54f., 
529; kinds of, 56, 195f.; of Na- 
ture (Chap, x), 198f.; of 
Beauty (Chap, xix), 409, 421; 
of Religion (Chap, xx), 430f. 

Philosophy, Schools of, (Chap, 
iii), popular misunderstandings 
about, 33f., 36; the founders 
of, 34f.; sources of, 35, 37f., 
52; detailed differences of, 36f., 
52f. ; effect of temperament on, 
38f. ; improperly so-called, 42f., 
44; the three, properly so- 
called, 44f.; practical truths 
concerning, 55. 

Pistis Sophia, the writing, quoted 
from, 475. 

Plato, his conception of phi- 
losophy, 4, 21, 320; nature of 
his idealism, 4, 21, 35; quoted, 



320; on nature of wisdom, 327; 
on a theodicy, 487. 

Poetby, as aesthetical use of lan- 
guage, 404f.; leading charac- 
teristics of, 404f., 406; aesthet- 
ical effect of, 406f. 

Pragmatism, relation of, to ra- 
tionalism, 37. 

Psychology, relation of, to phi- 
losophy, 14f.; "without a 
soul," 16f.; of cognition, 6 If. 

Quality, as a category of all 
things, 187f., 216f. 

Quantity, as a category, not suf- 
ficient to account for constitu- 
tion of things, 217, 256f. 

Raymond, du Bois, quoted, 221, 
256. 

Realism, as a school in phi- 
losophy, 35, 44f., 59; primitive 
forms of, 45f.; its need of the 
Ideal, 46, 59f. 

Reality, as involved in knowl- 
edge, 76f., 88f., 155f., 175f., 194, 
253, 460f., 529f.; primary prop- 
ositions regarding, 175f., 194; 
of the World, as a whole, 253f. 

Reflection, as method of phi- 
losophy, If. (Chap, ii), llf., 
2 If., 24, 38. 

Relation, importance of, as cate- 
gory, 176, 180, 182f.; meaning 
of, as applied to Things, 182f., 
184; not merely subjective, 
183f. 

Religion, psychological sources of, 
(Chap, xx), 433f., 436, 438f., 
440, 447f., 449, 451f.; nature of 
the experience of, 431, 440, 447, 
458f., 493; definition of, 433; 
relations of, to science, 434f., 
460f.; Object of faith in, 436, 
444f., 458f., 502; metaphysical 
postulate of, 441, 443f., 455; 
influence of aesthetical feeling 
in, 449f., 493; and of moral 
sentiments, 150f., 472, 493. 

Ribot, quoted, 158. 



INDEX 



Riehl, quoted, 73. 

Scepticism, nature of the phi- 
losophical, 42f., 100 (Chap, 
vii), 146f; its ultimate form, 
100; limits of, 1281, 133f., 135, 
1461, 434; necessity for prac- 
tical solution of, 1281, 4341 

Schleiermacher, pantheistic con- 
ceptions of, 508. 

Schopenhauer, his criticism of 
Kant, 73, 881; conclusion as 
to essence of things, 89, 437; 
criticism of Jacobi, 120; view 
of, as to the province of intel- 
lect in cognition, 123; and as 
to the "will to live," 4371 

Schultz, quoted, 459. 

Schurman, quoted, 465. 

Science, criticism of the cate- 
gories of, 141 (Chap, x), 220, 
2211, 224; ontological faith of, 
1241, 434; grounds of cer- 
tainty in, 1311, 133; relations 
of, to religion, 4341 

Sciences, the "particular," rela- 
tion of, to philosophy, 91, 141, 
19, 261, 145, 1971; as descrip- 
tive, 1331; characteristics of 
the so-called " psychological," 
1341; interdependence of, 1451; 
their need of criticism, 1971 
(note). 

Sculpture, as related to archi- 
tecture, 394; chief characteris- 
tics of, 3941 

Self, the, psychological develop- 
ment of, 791, 82, 1981, 225, 
235; feelings of, 81, 2321, 243; 
identity of the, 1031, 107, 136, 
198, 225, 2291, 231 ; such terms 
as " unconscious " and " sub- 
conscious " inapplicable to, 
1361, 227, 233; ability of, to 
transcend itself, 1461, 2291; as 
distinguishing itself from 
Things, 1981, 2251; essentially 
a mind, 2271, 2311; nature of 
the consciousness of, 2281 ; and 
of its reality, 2291, 235, 2361; 



the moral Self, 2721, 2741 
(Chap, xiv), 2781, 2851, 29 If., 
2981, 3011, 3031, 3281, 331, 
3461 

Sociology, vague conception of, 
17. 

Soul, psychological use of word 
(see also Self), 2261; immor- 
tality of, 2481 

Space, as a category, of all things, 
1621, 164, 173, 178. 

Spencer, Herbert, on unity of 
Forces, 189; on nature of ethics, 
273. 

Spinoza, his conception of phi- 
losophy, 5, 35; philosophic aims 
of, 35; his dualistic conception 
of Nature, 263, 515; on sources 
of religion, 438. 

Spirit, immanency of, in Matter, 
2541, 263, 2641, 436, 5061, 536; 
the Absolute, incomprehensible, 
2651, 4651 ; but conceived of as 
Ethical, 436, 460. 

Subjectivism, as outcome of the 
Kantian criticism, 1561 (see 
also Idealism). 

Substance, the category of, its 
nature analyzed, 1641, 167, 
187; as involving the mystery 
of existence, 1671, 173, 187. 

Sufficient Reason, Principle 
OF, as used in formal logic, 
1011, 1071, 113; its validity 
discussed, 1071, 1101; facts un- 
derlying it, 1081; metaphysical 
meaning of, 1101, 118, 124; 
wherein consists their " suffi- 
ciency," 1121, 1181, 1291, 142. 

Supernatural, the, meaning of 
the term, 5161; legitimate con- 
ception of, 5171, 5191 

Sympathy, psychological doctrine 
of, 3151, 321; not essentially 
altruistic, 3211 

Tabu, significance of, in religion, 

4501 
Tait, quoted, 221, 256. 
Teiciimuller, quoted, 193. 



INDEX 



549 



Theodicy, problem cf a, 4S61, 
488, 490f.; argument from igno- 
rance, 488f.; evidences for faith, 
488f., 490f. 
Theory of Reality (see also 
Metaphysics), popular form 
of, 159; as a doctrine of the 
categories, 175f., 185f., 199; 
must be dynamical, 188f., 192; 
justifies a certain kind of per- 
sonification, 199; but the sci- 
ences have objections to urge, 
207f. 

Thing-in-itself ( see Noumenon ) , 
scientific conception of, as in- 
cluded in the use of the term 
"nature," 212f., 214; Kantian 
use, unmeaning, 252. 

Things, the cognition of, 87f., 
104f., 112, 163, 165, 536; re- 
garded as under law, 112f., 179; 
nature of their objectivity, 
115f., 165, 197f., 214; ontologi- 
cal character of, 163, 165f., 178, 
184, 220, 232, 240, 518f., 531; 
measurableness of, 166f., 215f. ; 
as concrete realization of all 
the categories, 178, 191, 220, 
232; nature of the unity of, 
179, 191, 518f., 520; as actually 
related, 184f.; and subject to 
change, 188f.; ideal character 
of, 19 If., 209; how distin- 
guished from selves, 197f., 
209f.; as incomplete selves, 
206f., 213, 232, 518; mysterious 
nature of, 209f., 213, 518f.; as 
having a certain self-determina- 
tion, 213f., 240f. 

Thompson, Sir Wm., on the 
definition of Matter, 255. 

Thought, as relating activity, 
63f., 109, 112, 297; nature of 
logical or inferential, 109f.; as 
resulting in judgment and 
knowledge, 133, 374; its uses in 
religion, 447f. 

Time, category of, as applied to 
the Divine Being, 4801 

Tourgueneff, quoted, 331f. 



Tragedy, as the highest form of 

art, 424f., 426f. 
Trendelenburg, his definition of 

philosophy, 6f. 

Upanishads, the, conception of 
philosophy of, 21; and of the 
Divine Being, 475. 

Utilitarianism, as a school of 
ethics, criticized, 343f., 3461, 
348f., 351f., 355; its psychology 
of pleasure-pains, a mistake, 
344f., 347f., 3501 (Chap. xvi). 

Virtues, kinds and unity of the 
(Chap, xv), 315f., 317, 323, 
326, 334; "essence" of them 
all, 315f v 323, 324f., 326, 328, 
334; classification of the, 317; 
of the Will, 317f.; of the Judg- 
ment, 318f., 320; of the Heart, 
321f. 

Will, uses of the word, 247f., 
301f., 451; essential nature of, 
3011; virtues of the, 3171; at- 
titude of, in the life of religion, 
4511 

World, the, Unity of, how under- 
stood, 1811, 1841, 186, 219, 
2531, 4341, 4621, 504; as com- 
posed of things related, 1841; 
analysis of conception of the, 
219, 253; relations of to the Di- 
vine Being (Chap, xxiii), 5061, 
509. 

World-Ground, as a philosophi- 
cal abstraction, 2231, 457, 464; 
as Moral Personality, 3631, 
4561, 40 If.; from the sesthetical 
point of view, 4241; as Abso- 
lute Person (Chap, xxi), 4601, 
464, 4681, 474, 476, 4781, 48 If., 
483. 

Wundt, on relations of phi- 
losophy to psychology, 16; on 
ethics as a science, 270, 273; on 
the virtues of primitive man, 
322; and on humanity, 322. 

Zelxeb, quoted, 4. 



•CT 11 ' 9M 



